#1 - On the modern abuse of the word "art"

What is art, even? This question, spoken aloud after a night of eating way too much chinese food, provoked a small debate. This was months ago. So far we have shared videos, articles, quotes, and many other interesting viewpoints, in our desire to find out what art even is. Then we hit a wall. It is our interest, from this point onward, to take the debate public. We do this, because we think there are many other people like us, who are fundamentally interesting in the subject of beauty and art, and yet feel somewhat at odds with the way the matter is being handled in public debate. It is our hope that our ponderings, however silly they might be, can be of interest, whether for entertainment or educational purposes, to people in similar situations.

(C) - So, what sort of premises are you coming at this with?

(F) - In my opinion, when one is hurdling slowly towards an improved understanding of art, I can think of two important premises, one of which being that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder or “A urinal is not art”. By this I mean I am convinced that there must be some sort of “essence” that all art subscribes to. After all, how can we talk about art as a concept if our ideas of what it is wildly differ. And why would we need the word ‘art’ at all?

(C) - When you say that, I can not help but think of Plato. I know that I always harp on about old-timey philosophers, for example in Symposion, where he very clearly get’s at the notion that there is some sort of truth or idea, that all beauty (and all things, if you read more of his dialogues) participate in:

using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is

• -Plato, Symposion, 211.

The idea that there must be some “essence” of a thing, is not entirely new. Although the idea has somewhat fallen out of use in modern language, because we often view it as reductive - or at least that’s the charge often leveled at me when I present the case. My point is, the word “Art” is either (1) entirely useless, because it is merely a word we use to describe something we fancy, either aesthetically or because of it’s message, or (2) woefully abused in our modern language, because we throw it around at whatever seems to be this week’s new shiny golden calf.

(F) - Given the two options, I would personally lean towards the latter. There ought to be a limited amount of discussion about whether art exists, or else the word wouldn’t have been used to describe our topic in the first place, even though its exact definition has yet to be agreed upon. I think what we can agree on is that the usage of the word ‘art’ as a label is, in today’s society, heavily misguided. I could compare it to the word ‘awesome’. The go-to meaning of ‘awesome’ has become utterly diluted - now an expression for anything we find to be even vaguely interesting or exciting, where it originally was reserved for a feeling that came from a place of true wonder with a dash of fear. ‘Art’ has evolved fairly much the same way. Nowadays, any sort of creative expression is labelled art.

(C) - Just for arguments sake, what would one say to someone who doesn't agree with your idea of art as something more. Maybe, this sort of person would say, we have evolved past the age of superstition and now see art for what it truly is - something simply to tickle our senses, in any way possible. Personally, the only good arguments I can think of, in favor of art as “something more” are (1) A theistic one, which is not really of interest currently, and (2) The fact that most cultures have evolved a perception of art independently, however different they may be. What exactly this “more” is, is something we will have to debate further, but currently I find that our arguments (that the word Art is abused in our society today) rests on us demonstrating that “Art” is distinct and different from “Pleasant”.

(F) - Well, if we truly want to find out what’s going on here, I think we have to explore our premise further, that premise being that beautiful (art) is distinct from the pleasant. The question is how do we do that?

(C) - I think we would have to find art that is not necessarily pleasant, and something pleasant that is not necessarily art.

And thus the research began...

Source: http://www.accademia.org/explore-museum/artworks/michelangelos-david/