Question:
What is defined by good art?
We say sometimes this is a great photograph, a great drawing, a great poem, why do we say that? What defines these things as being "good"?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
What is art?
Firstly, let us look at what is said about the art by the world??s largest and most trustworthy internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia: It says,
??The arts is a broad subdivision of culture, composed of many expressive disciplines. In modern usage, it is a term broader than "art", which usually means the visual arts (comprising fine art, decorative art, and crafts). The art encompasses visual arts, performing arts, language arts, and culinary arts. Many artistic disciplines involve aspects of the various arts, so the definitions of these terms overlap to some degree.??
I agree with Wikipedia that art is a broad subdivision of culture. If someone comments that you are very artistic in ancient India, you would most probably describe a very good sculpture but if someone says that to you in a cooking class, they would most probably be appreciating the good culinary skills the person has created to quench the eyes and taste buds of a beholder. I also realized that there are a lot of types of arts in this modern world which we may try to broadly classify.
Can Art Be Defined?
Secondly we look into an account by some world famous philosophers?? say on art in a book I found in our very own Shaw library. This argument totally defies the definition I found in Wikipedia.
??There is an immense variety among the works of art: paintings, plays, films, novels, pieces of music and dance may seem to have very little in common. This has led some philosophers that art cannot be defined at all. They claim that it is a complete mistake to look for a common denominator since there is just too much variety among the works of art for a definition which applies to them all to be satisfactory.??
The philosophers above used the ??family resemblance view?? in the book ??Philosophical Investigations?? by Ludwig Wittgenstein to come to the argument. Let us have a look at the special view stated:
??You may look a little like your father, and your father may resemble his sister. However, it is possible that you look nothing like your father??s sister. In other words there may be overlapping resemblances between the different members of a family without there being one observable feature which they all share. Similarly, many games resemble each other, but it is difficult to see what solitaire, chess, rugby, and tiddlywinks have in common.
The resemblance in different types of art may be of this type: despite the obvious similarities between some works of art, there may be no observable features they all which they all share (no common denominator). If this is so, it is a mistake to look for any general definition of art. The best we can hope for is the definition of an art form like a novel, painting, a dish or a play.??
Looking at this argument I would not agree with them saying art works will not have anything at all in common after I read the second page of the book where they actually tried to contradict the previous page about the argument that there being no definition for art. We appreciate some form of art we are definitely linking to common thoughts of expressions. Hence there is something that connects between the creator and observer and that factor can define what the art means to both of them.
And to prove this view as false they rewrite their saying as:
??One way of proving this view false would be to produce a satisfactory definition of art. We will look at a number of attempts to do this. However, it is worth noting that even in the case of family resemblance there is something which all members of a family do have in common: the fact that they are genetically related. And all games all games resemble each other in that they have the potential to be absorbing non practical interest to players or spectators. Now, whilst this definition of games is rather vague, and not entirely satisfactory – it does not, for example, help us distinguish games from such activities as kissing or listening to music – it suggests that a more detailed and plausible definition could be found. If this could be done for games, there is no reason to rule out in advance the possibility of doing that for the works of art. Of course the common denominator of all works of art may not turn out to be particularly interesting or important, but it clearly might be possible to find one.??
Even I feel that art can be defined as there has to be a way for everything in the world to be called as thus, I went out to search for possible definitions and found a few in the internet and a few in some books Here they are(bibliography provided at the back in colour code):
- Art creates beauty. Art is the vanguard of taste, trumpeting fashion before it actually exists.
- Art is that human activity which consists in one human consciously conveying to others, by certain external signs, the feelings he has experienced, and in others being affected by those feelings and also experiencing them. .
- Objects created by humans that have aesthetic value or express symbolic meaning, including drawings, paintings, and sculpture.
- Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature. (Marcel Proust)