DescentBB

LEON wrote:

sigma wrote:(...) But creative people are much more talented and stronger their natural talents in the field of science and of creative ideas. In true creative people, the energy is not aimed at achieving material benefits for themselves,but to achieve the goals that will be useful to the progress of mankind. I do not envy their life, but I admire them.

Like Steve Jobs?

I'm sorry, I do not know what good for the human civilization did Steve Jobs.

Spidey wrote:If I go out to my barn and nail some sticks together, bring the creation into my house and say it’s a chair….it’s a chair…period, it may not be a very good chair, but it is still a chair.

The person that creates something has the absolute right to define what it is…not you.

“You” have every right to like or dislike it, but “you” do not have the right to define it.

But if you turn a hobby horse upside down, nail its head to the floor, and say it's a chair, I would rightly define it as a moderately supportive stick up your ass, not a chair. The definition at work is that it must support you, and in a sitting position. I think a strong argument could also be make that a chair must have legs or else it becomes more generally a "seat".

You assumed that my chair was not functional.

Shame on you…

Option A: Who said your chair was not functional? I like your chair, but I don't know what the ★■◆● you were thinking with that hobby horse.

Option B: I should be ashamed? You're the one that built it!!


Option C: I was mere exploring the criteria you set forth. I never said anything about your chair.


Choose your own adventure.

That’s called a strawman.

HEH! Maybe I'm just easily amused but the arguing/debating about an imaginary shitty chair is one of the more funny derailments I've read recently.

Spidey wrote:That’s called a strawman.

I don't think so. You said you could nails some sticks together, call it a chair, and it's a chair because you define it as a chair, being the creator. My point was that you only get to define it as a chair if it meets certain criteria, since you weren't the original inventor of "chair". The fact is your chair is a chair because it is a chair, no matter how roughly made it might be, not because you defined it as a chair. If it is not a chair and you choose to define it as a chair, you're a loony (as in the case of the hobby-horse, which, in your defense, might have been partly my idea).

No, the only reason I defined it as a chair is because it is a chair. I never meant it as some absolute, meaning you have the right to define something as something it is not, my point is that the creator has the right to define their own work…not you.

If I create a piece of art….that’s what it is…art.

You said it yourself, you said you reserve the right to define what art is, so if you created some art, and somebody else called it crap…what would it be?

An emotional imperative shielded from logic in order to preserve its sacred existence?

EDIT: It's crappy art!

I would say as long as something is being expressed it IS art.

I wrote:I believe real art is the expression of a form or idea through a medium that requires some skill to manipulate. If it's pretentious, random, or unimaginative, they may call it "art", but I don't accept it.

Interesting question to anyone who wants to take a crack: If someone is engaged in forging a painting, have they made art?

Sergeant Thorne wrote:...you only get to define it as a chair if it meets certain criteria, since you weren't the original inventor of "chair".

And Thorne raises Plato from the dead.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:I believe real art is the expression of a form or idea through a medium that requires some skill to manipulate. If it's pretentious, random, or unimaginative, they may call it "art", but I don't accept it.

Close. Art is the expression of an idea though a medium. This is the most succinct definition. What makes art good or bad is how the message is delivered. Aesthetic skill has nothing to do with it. However, if you don't get the message then the execution might be considered "unskillful." It is still art, just bad art (or you are not the target audience and are not meant to understand). You can say there is an "art" to things like forgery, but that is just craftsmanship. In the case of "Putin in Panties" it's definitely meets all the criteria for art. It's rather unattractive aesthetically, but the message is clear. I give it a 6/10.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:An emotional imperative shielded from logic in order to preserve its sacred existence?

Wait, are you talking about religion now?

sigma wrote:I'm sorry, I do not know what good for the human civilization did Steve Jobs.

Why, he gave corporate America the wonderful idea of the walled garden! Bow to ye Apple masters or ye shall be kicked out of ye Apple Garden of Eden!

tunnelcat wrote:The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

That definition might be true, problem though; it's too inclusive. More inclusive a definition is, the more ambiguous it is as well.

Let me give an example: Some time ago someone defined the concept painting as paint on canvas. This is also a definition that are too inclusive - anything can be a painting by that definition.
However, this lead to some painters painted their canvas with just one color, and submitted it for review to an exhibition. The committee had to approved the painting, and it was exhibited - it was, after all, inside the broad definition of what a painting was. This story shows us one more thing. It shows us how art is used to comment on certain things. In this case a concept and its definition, and showed us how that definition was insufficient. I would believe the painting went through the jury on this ground - it was a comment on a present definition.

Which brings me to what I believe is the most important branch in philosophy - concept formation and understanding.
I believe a concepts must be understood through its whole content, and not only by its essence. Paint on canvas is the essence, but lacks content. This is in opposition to the prevailing opinion, which held that what's in the essence is everything we know about a concept. Both nominalism (Aristotle) and realism (Plato) held this belief. Nominalism is dominant today. However, this kind of concept understanding gives us some strange conclusions. For instance, the essence of the concept human, is rational animal. But, let's say just hypothetical that an alien race from space shows up, by that definition then, we can define them as humans as well. Which I believe few people would agree on. Reason for this disagreement, is that we do not understand concepts only by its essence, but by its whole content. However, in today's political and intellectual environment this concept understanding by essence, and not content, is dominant. It's called subjectivism. I call it concept confusion.

Let me give a example from reality: The concept slavery means forced labor in essence. Some people then (especially left wing libertarians), claim that employment is slavery. Why? Because we are forced to work. One can claim that the wage makes a difference, but no, they call it wage slavery. Prominent philosophers like Noam Chomsky hold this notion.
What these people fail to understand is that slavery and labor, though they share some similarities in essence, have way different elements in their content. Slavery has the whip, chains and an owner, i.e. violence. Labor is trading one's productivity for a wage, something we must do because of a fundamental attribute in reality - scarcity, i.e. to work is a necessity. If we look closer now, the "forced to work" have two different causes in those two concepts. Slavery is violence, labor is necessary. To say that they are both the same, is to say that violence and necessity is the same thing too.
The trick here is to confuse concepts and use a prescriptive concept on a descriptive concept. Slavery has a strong prescriptive (normative) content. And by using it on labor, one try to achieve a discreditation of wage labor and the economy as a whole.
A problem these people face though, is that it often backfire. If a prescriptive content can be glued on a descriptive concept, it can work the opposite direction as well. If we get used to call employment slavery, we can end up with a view that slavery is normal, i.e. a descriptive concept. Something that I believe is about to happen with the concept racism. People have used it in too many contexts, and the concept loses its prescriptive impact. Just to round up and get back to where I started; one has given racism a too inclusive definition, and are therefore meaningless.

OK, that was short on concept theory. Point is, essence is not enough to understand a concept.

So, what is art then. To be honest, I don't know. Art is not my field, even though I have worked both as an illustrator and as a dancer. Last three year of my dance career, I worked on the art scene.

I believe art is a concretization of the fundamental ideas that a society has. For instance in classic art, they believed in elevated, spiritual and eternal values, thus they tried to visualize those ideas, and use materials that reflected eternity - like marble.
In contemporary art, which is sometimes made not to last (use materials that erode over time), and have a ambiguous appearance, is reflecting our present time values. Which is fast changing and subjective.

Art can explore reality. For instance, in Impressionism one try to paint what one see. What one see is a philosophical question, a question the impressionists tried to solve. If one think about it, in previous paintings everything was in focus and frozen in time. That is not the case with our perceptions. When we look at reality only the center of our views are in focus, everything around is blurry, and, in motion. The impressionists tried to solve the problem of how to paint what one see, and take these blurry effects into account.

How about paint things like they are? Something the Cubists tried to solve. There's an anecdote about Picasso. He met a guy who couldn't understand why he didn't paint people like they are. Picasso asked what he meant by that. The guy took a picture from his wallet, and said; -See, this is my wife. Picasso looked at it and said; -Oh, she was very small and flat.
Think about it, how can we paint things like they are? If one look at a bottle from the side, one will see a shape, change the angle, from above, one will see another shape. To paint a bottle like it is, one must include all these angles, and one will end up with another bottle than we see in reality. Likewise when they paint a face, the painting include both front view and profile. A art direction called Cubism.

Mondrian tried to paint concepts, not things, but the essence of things. If I remember right he started with trees. He tried to paint what all trees had in common, i.e. the concept. At the end he tried to explore what all thing had in common - the very fundamental of everything.

Often when people say how thing looks like or how things are, they actually mean photo realism. Artists, like I have showed above, often take a more philosophical approach, and try to dig deeper into reality.

OK, that was my poor attempt to say something about art theory. As always, I hope my English isn't too primitively formulated and staccato to follow.

your expressiveness in words is just fine, LEON, but I disagree completely with your point. To wit, I'll give one example....you feel that 'paint on canvas' is too broad or imprecise a definition. Sorry, but actually, it is far too narrow for any artist to live with. Painting surfaces can include canvas, paper, wood, finished wood panels, cave walls, buildings(mural art), metal, fiberglass, whatever. How about 'paint'. Should it be limited to oil, or watercolor(aquarelle), or acrylic, or latex house paint, or gouache, or egg tempera, or maybe some substance never pondered yet? Limiting the definition of art therefore limits the scope of what is art, and thus limits the imagination of the artist, killing art in the process.

tunnelcat wrote:

sigma wrote:I'm sorry, I do not know what good for the human civilization did Steve Jobs.

Why, he gave corporate America the wonderful idea of the walled garden! Bow to ye Apple masters or ye shall be kicked out of ye Apple Garden of Eden!

He helped develop personal computers. Computers which we use to have these debates, play games and organize our lives.
Computers have made communications easier and the world smaller, and maybe created more jobs than anything else. On my work place we have countless of computers.

In the 80's Motorola came up one of the first mobile phones - Dynatac 8000 if I remember right. A phone with a price tag of 4000$ in my country. A phone that was the very symbol of richness, popularized by Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street. What could this phone do? You could talk in it.
Today, not only rich people have phones, also the poor - smartphones. What can that phone do? One can talk, send sms, send mail, take pictures, make a film, surf on the net, pay one's bills, scan barcodes, countless with other apps, and even write on these boards. It's just one tenth the size of a Dynatac, one twelfth the price. And everyone has one.

I have a hard time to see that this has not contributed to our life and civilization.

callmeslick wrote:your expressiveness in words is just fine, LEON, but I disagree completely with your point. To wit, I'll give one example....you feel that 'paint on canvas' is too broad or imprecise a definition. Sorry, but actually, it is far too narrow for any artist to live with. Painting surfaces can include canvas, paper, wood, finished wood panels, cave walls, buildings(mural art), metal, fiberglass, whatever. How about 'paint'. Should it be limited to oil, or watercolor(aquarelle), or acrylic, or latex house paint, or gouache, or egg tempera, or maybe some substance never pondered yet? Limiting the definition of art therefore limits the scope of what is art, and thus limits the imagination of the artist, killing art in the process.

You miss my point. Read everything.

By your "extended" definition. Is the guy who paint your house white, an artist? It's after all paint on a surface.

Edit: I might remember wrong, it was paint on a surface, not paint on canvas. Anyway, my point remains.

LEON wrote:

callmeslick wrote:your expressiveness in words is just fine, LEON, but I disagree completely with your point. To wit, I'll give one example....you feel that 'paint on canvas' is too broad or imprecise a definition. Sorry, but actually, it is far too narrow for any artist to live with. Painting surfaces can include canvas, paper, wood, finished wood panels, cave walls, buildings(mural art), metal, fiberglass, whatever. How about 'paint'. Should it be limited to oil, or watercolor(aquarelle), or acrylic, or latex house paint, or gouache, or egg tempera, or maybe some substance never pondered yet? Limiting the definition of art therefore limits the scope of what is art, and thus limits the imagination of the artist, killing art in the process.

You miss my point. Read everything.

By your "extended" definition. Is the guy who paint your house white, an artist? It's after all paint on a surface.

generally speaking, no, because he doesn't define it as such. Then again, if you knew the guy I hire to do painting jobs on my houses.......another matter entirely!(if you could see what he paints onto scraped surfaces before priming, you would know).

I made small edit on my previous post (my reply to you)

LEON wrote:I made small edit on my previous post (my reply to you)

I read it, thanks.....although you did originally state 'canvas', the overall points we're both trying to make remain the same.

It is so clear that you're a pragmatist. I'm the very opposite. So now you know where I'm coming from

Your extended definition do not add anything to the definition. Paint is a concept, it means any kind of paints.
I said canvas. But I believe I made a mistake there. Artist have painted on different surfaces since way back, so if some art theorist were to make a definition, I don't think they had limited their definition to only canvas. Canvas is a particular, not a concept. To use surface is more logical. Surfaces mean all surfaces there is.

So; now we have paint on a surface. Which mean any kind of paint, and any kind of surface. A concept and the very essence of paintings.

Which gave us paintings made of only one color, and was consider art because of the above definition.

I believe also that a house painter is an artist by this definition, which mean the definition is too broad.

To make a painting definition useful one must add content to the concept, just the essence is not enough. Exactly what one must add to the definition I don't know. It's a job for the theorists. But if I should suggest, it must be; a painting needs a theoretical idea, formal characteristics, composition and color used according to color theory. These things determines also the paintings quality. What one paint is irrelevant, if it's non figurative or realism, etc. However, one can break one or more of those things, but that require that one can explain it, which brings us back to my first point - a theoretical idea. One cannot just randomly diverge from the definition. Like when the impressionists changed direction, they did so on grounds of an idea.

let me give you another example to ponder, LEON. This is also a painting example. Minimalism. Now this uses your raw definition of paint on a surface. In fact, the concept/theory behind it is that the plane of that surface is the entire reason for being. Thus, while things like Abstract Expressionism and other non-objective forms celebrated the surface, the minimalists brought forth largely monochromatic, uniflected(or uniform textured) surfaces, and little else. They had the paint, the surface, the concept, the whole thought process. What resulted was truly(in my mind) Fine Art, but many who see such works react with puzzlement or comments like, 'I could do that'. Which, in fact they could, technically......the just never gave it the thought beforehand, as the minimalists did. To do similar paintings today, 40 years later, would be but a weak artifice, but the results might look identical. See how tricky this all gets?

LEON, and Slick, you're both getting over-analytical. You both remind me of Spock from Star Trek.

Art is usually created because of the emotions and feelings driving the artist. It's expressed through that artist's work, actions, desires and abilities. Why else would someone like Michelangelo labor for years on his back painting a ceiling in a church or carving a large intricate statue out of marble? Even a machine can create art, but only humans, with those fickle emotions and complicated brains can actually decide if it's art and then actually appreciate it. Ballet is art, opera is art, music is art, photography is art, stained glass is art, sculpture is art, painting is art, the tracings on a silicon wafer are art, even a supernova or nebula in space is art, all because the human mind looked upon it, then liked what it saw. You can't quantify it in analytical terms because it can't be analyzed. It's a feeling, ethereal and fleeting. Someone or something creates an object, or does something skillful, and it's up to others to decide whether they like or dislike what was created.

LEON, my comment about Steve Jobs was kind of a joke. Sure, he was the driving force behind many of today's popular digital devices, but it's how he controlled the content accessed and paid for through his devices that will be his lasting legacy. Apple devices are a slave to purchasing all things from Apple and Apple only. Jobs was a control freak, if anything else can be said about him.

callmeslick wrote:let me give you another example to ponder, LEON. This is also a painting example. Minimalism. Now this uses your raw definition of paint on a surface. In fact, the concept/theory behind it is that the plane of that surface is the entire reason for being. Thus, while things like Abstract Expressionism and other non-objective forms celebrated the surface, the minimalists brought forth largely monochromatic, uniflected(or uniform textured) surfaces, and little else. They had the paint, the surface, the concept, the whole thought process. What resulted was truly(in my mind) Fine Art, but many who see such works react with puzzlement or comments like, 'I could do that'. Which, in fact they could, technically......the just never gave it the thought beforehand, as the minimalists did. To do similar paintings today, 40 years later, would be but a weak artifice, but the results might look identical. See how tricky this all gets?

Yes, I think I agree on this.

As for 'I could do that' thing. I have, as an illustrator and dancer, experienced thinks like that many times. I judge drawings different than my none drawing friends, same with dance. I always look for the technique, my friends watch the moves, or the content in a drawing.

tunnelcat wrote:LEON, and Slick, you're both getting over-analytical. You both remind me of Spock from Star Trek.

Art is usually created because of the emotions and feelings driving the artist. It's expressed through that artist's work, actions, desires and abilities. Why else would someone like Michelangelo labor for years on his back painting a ceiling in a church or carving a large intricate statue out of marble? Even a machine can create art, but only humans, with those fickle emotions and complicated brains can actually decide if it's art and then actually appreciate it. Ballet is art, opera is art, music is art, photography is art, stained glass is art, sculpture is art, painting is art, the tracings on a silicon wafer are art, even a supernova or nebula in space is art, all because the human mind looked upon it, then liked what it saw. You can't quantify it in analytical terms because it can't be analyzed. It's a feeling, ethereal and fleeting. Someone or something creates an object, or does something skillful, and it's up to others to decide whether they like or dislike what was created.

LEON, my comment about Steve Jobs was kind of a joke. Sure, he was the driving force behind many of today's popular digital devices, but it's how he controlled the content accessed and paid for through his devices that will be his lasting legacy. Apple devices are a slave to purchasing all things from Apple and Apple only. Jobs was a control freak, if anything else can be said about him.

Callmeslick, she bullies us for being Spock-like

I just partly agree on your emotion explanation.

I don't believe Jobs did anything questionable with his philosophy on product profile. He wanted to make sure his products had top quality all the time. People vote with their feet, are they dissatisfied they change their buying habits, and either Apple change, or some other producers will satisfy consumer demand. Which by the way we already have - android, windows, linux, etc.
Jobs character, however, I'm not sure. I read the biography on him and I must say I found him fascinating, but also strange - very strange. I don't think he was easy to deal with.

LEON wrote:

tunnelcat wrote:

sigma wrote:I'm sorry, I do not know what good for the human civilization did Steve Jobs.

Why, he gave corporate America the wonderful idea of the walled garden! Bow to ye Apple masters or ye shall be kicked out of ye Apple Garden of Eden!

He helped develop personal computers. Computers which we use to have these debates, play games and organize our lives.
Computers have made communications easier and the world smaller, and maybe created more jobs than anything else. On my work place we have countless of computers.

In the 80's Motorola came up one of the first mobile phones - Dynatac 8000 if I remember right. A phone with a price tag of 4000$ in my country. A phone that was the very symbol of richness, popularized by Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street. What could this phone do? You could talk in it.
Today, not only rich people have phones, also the poor - smartphones. What can that phone do? One can talk, send sms, send mail, take pictures, make a film, surf on the net, pay one's bills, scan barcodes, countless with other apps, and even write on these boards. It's just one tenth the size of a Dynatac, one twelfth the price. And everyone has one.

I have a hard time to see that this has not contributed to our life and civilization.

in my view, that is really useful to make the people who invented the Internet, the types of communication (but not the means of communication as Steve Jobs, as far as I know), opened the electricity, penicillin, antibiotics, internal combustion engine, etc.

LEON wrote:Callmeslick, she bullies us for being Spock-like

Actually, it was a compliment. I think Spock was the most rational character in Star Trek. Dr. McCoy drove me nuts with his whining.