You're literally incapable of summarizing?

Hi,

You are allowed to prompt for general thoughts, but simply linking your journal isn't exactly appropriate. Perhaps if you included a few sentences of the general premise of your discussion and then linked your journal for further prompts?

People are only doing fine finding a foothold for the conversation because they've had to actively click on your link and read through your piece.

Generally, I don't base my moderation on the comments, but on the actual OP itself, otherwise anybody who wanted to go off-topic on a thread could statistically keep the thread open.

Overall, if you could summarise things, that would be great. I'm not asking for you to copy/paste, just to list a few of your main points or a few questions that you'd like members to answer.

There's no need to get rid of the link to your journal, but simply linking it isn't appropriate for the forums.

Thank you.

For a long time I thought art can be absolutely objective (that was at the time when I didn't know much about art (or general drawing, sketching, creating etc.)). After I learned about the processes and ideas behind it I switched to the notion that art is absolutely subjective. But that's not absolutely true either. Now I'm at the position that I can say art is "subjectively objective", but only if there're defined criteria for every single piece of art. Only if you know what the goal is, the limitations the artist had to work with and the circumstances of the creation of a piece of art that were present at the time he made the piece you can think about it objectively. Without set criteria you cannot "objectively" assess a piece of art. And even if you have these criteria in place there's still a subjective perspective on the piece, because some elements have a bigger personal impact on you than others.
But it's true that some elements (like knowing about anatomy, composition, rendering etc.) can be looked at objectively, but that doesn't mean the final creation (based on abstraction, stylization, impressions, associations, symbols, metaphors, allegories, coincidence) is objectively assessable out of the blue.
This becomes even more obvious in design. There a goal, a target audience, limitations and freedoms have to be defined first in order to be able to create a specific design and in order to evaluate it. Without criteria you're trying to build a house on the fundament of feathers and air and as soon as you try to examine the tiles on the roof the whole building just collapses because of its weak fundament.

 

 

- [...] skew the definition of art [...] -

This in itself is an absurd statement, because you refused to define what you see as art. Therefore I'm unable to comment on it. But if you're really able to find a coherent definition for art you'll be famous.

Now you have to define knowledge too. I can guess what you're meaning and if I'm correct with my guess I would agree with you, but right now I cannot agree.


- [...] it seems like you're asserting subjective relativism [...] -

No, I don't. At least not in the simple sense. I said the creation of art is so individual that it is close to being completely subjective and relative, but only as long as you've not defined the goal of a piece of art and the criteria it has to meet. If the goal is known and the criteria are set you can objectively examine the artwork, its creation, general quality and impact. But without definition you're moving in absolute gray areas without any defined position.
And, art theory (for example by Umberto Eco) tries to understand art as inherently subjective, because without a recipient (the creator is the recipient at the same time) art doesn't exist. Art is created when the recipient looks at it and forms an interpretation of the seen ad hoc. What is perceived changes when the recipient changes. Theory states that the artist isn't the creator of art, but the recipient who looks at it. There can be approximations between understanding and interpretations of artists and non-artist (creator and non-creator), but they never fully match. What the recipient defines as art is art for him and whatever he doesn't define as art isn't art for him. Again, in some cases several individuals can look at a piece and decide it as art, because it hints at similar preferences and definitions and if these individuals have already defined various different examples of pieces to be art then they're able to evaluate the quality of a piece and find a consensus what "objective" art is without ever being truly objective. Art is based on context and time. What's considered to be art today might be considered degenerated in 1000 years, and if a piece of art is never seen by anybody again (because it's lost in a cave) this piece isn't art.


- [...] an attempt to dismiss the discussion [...] -

This is an infamous assumption. If I wanted to dismiss the discussion I wouldn't have taken the time to comment on your post. I pointed out that you're walking in a gray area and are trying to set standards without ever defining some limits to make these standards assessable.


- Insisting that science, logic and objectivity don't have a place in discussions about art, technical skill and the teaching thereof is to misunderstand these concepts on a very basic level. -

I never said they don't have any place in art. I said these things can be used if you set your criteria. You can technically analyze a painting, but you cannot technically analyze the impact of the depicted scene without these goals set first. Technical skill is different from the ability to come up with creative solutions for artistic problems. If you're technically perfect you can still be a bad conceptioner and a bad storyteller in art. Teaching art is yet another thing and depends on the philosophy of the teacher. Every art school has another focus and teaches things differently. Some fundamentals of art (the rightfully called technical aspects) can be taught, because they're mere observations of reality; but abstraction, stylization, conception etc. cannot be taught, only be shown on various more or less subjective examples and artistic solutions individuals came up with.


- I think we can discuss whether or not authority ought to confer some veracity on an artists assertions without all the deconstruction. -

Again you say what artists should do without defining art. You seem to say that artists generally assert something (what isn't true in the broad perspective; look at artistic experiments or unconscious art etc.) and that the work of an artist has to reflect their opinions (what isn't generally true either; look at commissioned art, concept art, functional art etc.). These things can all be true though for individual artists, but this isn't what you're saying. You seem to try to say that they must always be true for all artists.

 

 

Its not that Science, logic and objectivity don't have a place in the discussions about art, its that not all art needs or should be defined by these things. Art can be chaos and lack of logic or scientific method. it can be pure imagination untethered to reality. Just because you view art through the rose tinted glasses of Logic doesn't mean all art has to. He's right though. To objectively state what art means, some kind of goal or criteria need to be set in place.

You don't think of throwing paint on a canvas or abstract or fractals as meaningful art, but other people do Wes, i do. One of my favorite artists and best friend here on DA does mostly abstract and fractal art. There doesn't have to be any logic or reasoning behind why my friend made a particular piece Green and purple. He did it simply because that's what he felt like doing. He wanted to create some piece using Green and Purple to express his feelings, and he did. There's no logic, no reasoning, no scientific method to it, just feeling and expression. Art can be about pure feeling as well. So until you clarify and contextualize what kind of art you mean, generalizing art to be objective and rational is a fallacious concept. I'm not saying you're wrong and I don't think Florian is either. I think both of us agree that you need more context and an objective before you can objectify anything in art.