Re: Is IF art?


25 Oct 1995 22:55:13 GMT

(for those who are pissed off about this being in their newsgroup, please read
the last paragraph before flaming me).

>You say a highly-adorned chair is art, yet a plain chair is not.

This is not at all what I said, and in any case I was trying to give "the Greek"
view--whatever that may be--and not my own.

>As a
>craftsman, I say a simple chair is the highest form of woodworking
>art... embellishments can ruin the lines and distract the eye from
>'perfect form.' Sure, in some cases, a chair is a chair. But in
>others, what you call a chair, I call art. The Krenov that I call art,
>a fellow craftsman calls crap and a cheap ripoff of someone else's
>style. Even fellow artists cannot agree on what is art and what is not.

I can't see what your gripe is. You agree essentially with the Greeks that there
is a thing called the "chairmaking art," and that the chair which is most
fittingly made to suit its purpose of being sat upon is called a better work of
art than that which is not. Further, you admit that the embellishments are no
part of its "chairness" and may even detract from its ultimate purpose of being
sat upon if they, for example, weaken the legs. This is nothing different than I
was saying. Where you seem to part ways with the Greeks, though, is in thinking
that your admiration of a well-designed and well-made chair is the same as the
joy or catharsis or whatever you experience in a painting or in music. Your
admiration of the chair stems from your judgment that it is most fittingly made
to be sat upon. The joy you experience in a painting arises only out of the
imititation of nature depicted therein, although there may be, admittedly, a
similar admiration for the technique and so on as in the case of the chair. In
this case, though, just like with the chair, your admiration comes from a
judgment you are making about the painter's craft, and is not the same as the
pleasure you feel upon simply gazing at the picture.

>Art is all in the mind, mood, and referential framework. Knowing
>something about furniture building, I know a good, simple chair when I
>see one and I consider it art, yet the average person sees nothing but a
>chair because he lacks the *background* to see the art. If you know
>something about IF design, you may know an elegant story when you see
>it... while I may see it as nothing but a game.
>
>I think art is purely subjective... that there is no way to 'grade' art.
>What is one man's art is another man's passing fad.

If you refuse to draw distinctions between kinds of art as the Greeks did, then
you are left with this position. Art becomes simply everything which is man-made
with no subdivisions admitted according to species of art. On this understanding,
it is very true that only the chairmaker can enjoy the chair and the painter the
painting, since only they know their craft. But you will need to explain, then,
why it is that so many non-painters claim to enjoy gazing at paintings and why so
many people who have never studied music go to concerts.

Anyhow, this is the last I'm going to say about the matter, since it's really
outside the scope of this newsgroup. My only intention in posting the original
message at all was to try to defend my friends the Greeks against the heinous
slander <g> being hurled their way. I wasn't necessarily giving my own views on
the subject.

Jim Newland
76461.2144@compuserve.com