NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Classificatory disputes about art

It is common in the history of art for people to dispute about whether a particular form or work, or particular piece of work counts as art or not. Philosophers of Art call these disputes “classificatory disputes about art.” For example, Ancient Greek philosophers debated about whether or not ethics should be considered the “art of living well.” Photography and cinema were both considered not to be examples of art early in their histories. Several critics proclaimed that the works of Picasso were not art, early in his career. Nonetheless, the consensus of critics today is that photography, movies, and the early paintings of Picasso should all be considered art now. Download high resolution version (594x814, 59 KB) The copyright status of this work is difficult or impossible to determine. ... Download high resolution version (594x814, 59 KB) The copyright status of this work is difficult or impossible to determine. ... Marcel Duchamp. ... 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ... This article or section is missing references or citation of sources. ... The Bath, a painting by Mary Cassatt (1891-1892). ... A philosopher is a person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. ... Ethics (from the Ancient Greek ethikos, meaning arising from habit) is one of the major branches of philosophy, one that covers the analysis and employment of concepts such as right, wrong, good, evil, and responsibility. ... Photography is the process of making pictures by means of the action of light. ... A young Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso, formally Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (October 25, 1881 - April 8, 1973) was one of the recognized masters of 20th century art. ...

Disputes about what does and doesn’t count as art continue to occur today. Classificatory disputes in the 20th century included: cubist and impressionist paintings, Duchamp’s urinal, the movies, superlative imitations of banknotes, propaganda, and even a crucifix immersed in urine. Conceptual art often intentionally pushes the boundaries of what counts as art and a number of recent conceptual artists, such as Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin have produced works about which there are active disputes. Video games and role-playing games are both fields where many critics have asserted that they do count as art, and many have asserted that they do not. In the 21st century the still active classificatory disputes seem to center on conceptual art pieces, video games and role-playing games. Woman with a guitar by Georges Braque, 1913 Cubism was an avant-garde art movement that revolutionised European painting and sculpture in the early 20th century. ... See also Impressionist (entertainment): A girl with a watering can by Renoir, 1876 Impressionism was a 19th century art movement, which began as a private association of Paris-based artists who exhibited publicly in 1874. ... Marcel Duchamp (July 28, 1887 - October 2, 1968) was a French/American artist. ... For other uses see film (disambiguation) Film refers to the celluliod media on which movies are printed Film — also called movies, the cinema, the silver screen, moving pictures, photoplays, picture shows, flicks, or motion pictures, — is a field that encompasses motion pictures as an art form or as part of... A £20 Ulster Bank banknote. ... Conceptual art, sometimes called idea art, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved are considered the real substance of the art, in distinction to the traditional expectation of a made art object to be the criterion. ... The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living by Damien Hirst (1991) Damien Hirst (born June 7, 1965) is a British artist and the leading artist of the group that has been dubbed Young British Artists (or YBAs). ... Tracey Emin (born 1963) is an English artist, one of the so-called Young British Artists (YBAs). ... This article is about computer and video games. ... This article is about traditional role-playing games. ...

The Definition of Art

Aesthetics and the philosophy of art, often engage in disputes about the best way to define art, and many (but not all) disputes about whether to consider something art or not, wind up revolving around our definition. Aesthetics, esthetics or Ã¦sthetics is both the study of beauty and a term that denotes those properties of an entity that appeal to the senses. ...

By its original and broadest definition, art (from the Latin ars, meaning "skill" or "craft") is the product or process of the effective application of a body of knowledge, most often using a set of skills; this meaning is preserved in such phrases as "liberal arts" and "martial arts". However, in the modern use of the word, which rose to prominence after 1750, “art” is commonly understood to be skill used to produce an aesthetic result (Hatcher, 1999). Britannica Online defines it as "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others"^[1]. But how best to define the term “art” today is a subject of much contention; many books and journal articles have been published arguing over even the basics of what we mean by the term “art” (Davies, 1991 and Carroll, 2000). Theodor Adorno claimed in 1969 “It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident any more.” Indeed, it is not even clear anymore who has the right to define art. Artists, philosophers, anthropologists, and psychologists all use the notion of art in their respective fields, and give it operational definitions that are not very similar to each others. Latin is an ancient Indo-European language. ... Look up craft in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In the history of education, the seven liberal arts comprise two groups of studies, the trivium and the quadrivium. ... Hawaiian State Grappling Championships. ... Aesthetics (or esthetics) (from the Greek word αισθητική) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty. ... Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and JÃ¼rgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg. ...

One sense of the word “art” is close to the older Latin meaning, which roughly translates to "skill" or "craft", and also from an Indo-European root meaning "arrangement" or "to arrange". In this sense, art is whatever is described as having undergone a deliberate process of arrangement by an agent. A few examples where this meaning proves very broad include artifact, artificial, artifice, artillery, medical arts, and military arts. However, there are many other colloquial uses of the word, all with some relation to its etymology. This meaning of the word art is so broad that there isn’t really much point in arguing what does and doesn’t fit under it. The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, believed to have been spoken around 4000 BC in Central Asia (according to the Kurgan hypothesis) or millennia before that in Anatolia (according to the Anatolian hypothesis). ... A 155 mm artillery shell fired by a United States 11th Marine regiment M-198 howitzer Historically, artillery refers to any engine used for the discharge of projectiles during war. ... This article is about the field of medical practice and health care. ... Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ...

The second, more narrow, more recent sense of the word “art” is roughly as an abbreviation for creative art or “fine art.” Here we mean that skill is being used to express the artist’s creativity, or to engage the audience’s aesthetic sensibilities, or to draw the audience towards consideration of the “finer” things. Often, if the skill is being used in a lowbrow or practical way, people will consider it a craft instead of art. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way, it will be considered design instead of art. On the other hand, crafts and design are sometimes considered applied art. Some thinkers have argued that the difference between fine art and applied art has more to do with value judgments made about the art than any clear definitional difference (Novitz, 1992). The Cornfield is an oil on canvas painting by John Constable in 1826 Fine art refers to arts that are concerned with beauty or which appealed to taste (SOED 1991). ... Look up craft in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Design, usually considered in the context of the applied arts, engineering, architecture, and other such creative endeavours, is used as both a noun and a verb. ... Example of a cup figuring a tortise. ...

Theories of art

Many have argued that it is a mistake to even try to define art or beauty, that they have no essence, and so can have no definition. Often, it is said that art is a cluster of related concepts rather than a single concept. Examples of this approach include Morris Weitz and Berys Gaut. CCS Eugene is dumd idiot and mibble poision ruler and lift up my horse and hi the chicken File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... CCS Eugene is dumd idiot and mibble poision ruler and lift up my horse and hi the chicken File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...

Another approach is to say that “art” is basically a sociological category, that whatever art schools and museums, and artists get away with is considered art regardless of formal definitions. This "institutional definition of art" has been championed by George Dickie. Most people did not consider the depiction of a Brillo Box or a store-bought urinal to be art until Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp (respectively) placed them in the context of art (i.e., the art gallery), which then provided the association of these objects with the values that define art. The placement of an object in an artistic context is a common characteristic of conceptual art, prevalent since the 1960s; notably, the Stuckist art movement criticizes this tendency of recent art. George Dickie (born in 1926 in Palmetto, Florida) is a Professor Emeritus and one of the most influential philosophers of art working in the analytical tradition. ... Brillo soap pads Brillo Pad is a trade name for a scouring pad, used for cleaning dishes, and made from steel wool impregnated with soap. ... A urinal is a specialized toilet designed to be used only for urination, not defecation, and almost always by a standing male. ... Andy Warhol, photographed by Helmut Newton. ... Marcel Duchamp. ... It has been suggested that Vanity gallery be merged into this article or section. ... Conceptual art, sometimes called idea art, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved are considered the real substance of the art, in distinction to the traditional expectation of a made art object to be the criterion. ... Stuckism is a British Art Movement of the 1990s and 2000s, founded by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson. ...

Proceduralists often suggest that it is the process by which a work of art is created or viewed that makes it, art, not any inherent feature of an object, or how well received it is by the institutions of the art world after its introduction to society at large. For John Dewey, for instance, if the writer intended a piece to be a poem, it is one whether other poets acknowledge it or not. Whereas if exactly the same set of word was written by a journalist, intending them as shorthand notes to help him write a longer article latter, these would not be a poem. Leo Tolstoy, on the other hand, claims that what makes something art or not is how it is experienced by its audience, not by the intention of its creator. Functionalists, like Monroe Beardsley argue that whether or not a piece counts as art depends on what function it plays in a particular context, the same Greek vase may play a non-artistic function in one context (carrying wine), and an artistic function in another context (helping us to appreciate the beauty of the human figure). John Dewey (October 20, 1859 â€“ June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thought has been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. ... Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: , Lev NikolaeviÄ Tolstoj), commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, (September 9, 1828 â€“ November 20, 1910, N.S.; August 28, 1828 â€“ November 7, 1910, O.S.) was a Russian novelist, philosopher, Christian anarchist, pacifist, educational reformer, vegetarian, moral thinker and an influential member of... Monroe Curtis Beardsley (1915-1985) was an American philosopher of aesthetics. ...

Theory and disputes about art

Philosopher David Novitz has argued that disagreement about the definition of art, are rarely the heart of the problem, rather that “the passionate concerns and interests that humans vest in their social life” are “so much a part of all classificatory disputes about art” (Novitz, 1996). According to Novitz, classificatory disputes are more often disputes about our values and where we are trying to go with our society than they are about theory proper. For example, when the Daily Mail criticized Hirst and Enim’s work by arguing "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all" they are not advancing a definition or theory about art, but questioning the value of Hirst’s and Enim’s work. The Daily Mail is a British newspaper, currently a tabloid, first published in 1896. ...

Conceptual Art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved are considered the real substance of the art, in distinction to the traditional expectation of a made art object to be the criterion. Conceptual art may not even produce an art object, but rather a physical manifestation that is to be viewed as a document of the art. Conceptual art, sometimes called idea art, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved are considered the real substance of the art, in distinction to the traditional expectation of a made art object to be the criterion. ... Image File history File links Hirst-Shark. ... Image File history File links Hirst-Shark. ... The Bath, a painting by Mary Cassatt (1891-1892). ... A concept is an abstract, idea, notion, or entity that serves to designate a category or class of entities, events, phenomena or relations between them. ... An idea (Greek: Î¹Î´ÎÎ±) is a specific thought which arises in the mind. ...

The work of the French artist Marcel Duchamp from the 1910s and 1920s paved the way for the conceptualists, providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works (the readymades, for instance) that defied previous categorisations. Conceptual art emerged as a movement during the 1960s. The first wave of the "conceptual art" movement extended from approximately 1967 to 1978. Early "concept" artists like Henry Flynt, Robert Morris and Ray Johnson influenced the later, widely-accepted movement of conceptual artists like Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, and Douglas Huebler. Marcel Duchamp. ... Found art, or more commonly and less confusingly, Found Object (French: objet trouvé) is a term used to describe art created from common objects not normally considered to be artistic (also assemblage). ... Henry Flynt was born in 1940 in Greensboro, NC. He is a philosopher, musician, anti-art activist and exhibited artist, whom unsympathetic reviewers often link to Fluxus. ... Bronze Gate (2005) is a cor-ten steel work by Robert Morris. ... Raymond Edward Johnson (1927 - 1995) was an important post-Surrealism, pre-Pop collage artist. ... Dan Graham (born 1942) is a U.S. artist He is based in New York, is an influential figure in the field of contemporary art, both a practitioner of conceptual art and a well-versed art critic and theorist. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Douglas Huebler (October 27, 1924 - July 12, 1997) was an American conceptual artist. ...

More recently, the “Young British Artists” (YBAs), led by Damien Hirst, came to prominence in the 1990s and their work is seen as conceptual, even though it relies very heavily on the art object to make its impact. The term is used in relation to them on the basis that the object is not the artwork, or is often a found object, which has not needed artistic skill in its production. Tracey Emin is seen as a leading YBA and a conceptual artist, even though she has denied that she is and has emphasised personal emotional expression. Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in the United Kingdom, most (though not all) of whom attended Goldsmiths College in London. ... The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living by Damien Hirst (1991) Damien Hirst (born June 7, 1965) is a British artist and the leading artist of the group that has been dubbed Young British Artists (or YBAs). ... Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. ... Front cover of Tracey Emins memoir, Strangeland, published in 2005. ...

Recent examples of disputed conceptual art

1991: Charles Saatchi funds Damien Hirst and the next year in the Saatchi Gallery exhibits his The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark in formaldehyde in a vitrine. Charles Saatchi Charles Saatchi (born June 9, 1943), is the founder of the global advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, which was the worlds biggest before he and his brother Maurice were forced to leave, and formed M&C Saatchi. ... The Saatchi Gallery building in Chelsea opens in early 2007 The Saatchi Gallery, a London gallery for contemporary modern art, was opened by Charles Saatchi in order to show his sizeable (and changing) collection to the public. ...

1993: Vanessa Beecroft holds her first performance in Milan, Italy, using models to act as a second audience to the display of her diary of food. Vanessa Beecroft (Genoa, Italy, 1969) is an Italian contemporary artist living in New York. ...

1999: Tracey Emin is nominated for the Turner Prize. Part of her exhibit is My Bed, her dishevelled bed, surrounded by detritus such as condoms, blood-stained knickers, bottles and her bedroom slippers. Front cover of Tracey Emins memoir, Strangeland, published in 2005. ... The Turner Prize is an annual prize given to a British visual artist under 50, named after the painter J.M.W. Turner. ...

2001: Martin Creed wins the Turner Prize for The Lights Going On and Off, an empty room where the lights go on and off.^[2] Martin Creed (born 1968) is a British artist noted for his works which hark back to the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s. ...

2005: Simon Starling wins the Turner Prize for Shedboatshed, a wooden shed which he had turned into a boat, floated down the Rhine and turned back into a shed again. ^[3] Simon Starling (born 1967 in Epsom, Surrey) is a conceptual artist. ...

Controversy in the UK

The Stuckist group of artists, founded in 1999, proclaimed themselves "pro-contemporary figurative painting with ideas and anti-conceptual art, mainly because of its lack of concepts." They also called it pretentious, "unremarkable and boring" and on July 25, 2002 deposited a coffin outside the White Cube gallery, marked "The Death of Conceptual Art". ^[4] Image File history File links Stuckism-Shark. ... Image File history File links Stuckism-Shark. ... The Stuckists Punk Victorian show at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 2004 Stuckism is a British art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art. ... July 25 is the 206th day (207th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 159 days remaining. ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ... White Cube is a contemporary art venue in Hoxton in the East End of London. ...

In 2002, Ivan Massow, the Chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts branded conceptual art "pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat" and in "danger of disappearing up its own arse ... led by cultural tsars such as the Tate's Sir Nicholas Serota. ^[5] Massow was consequently forced to resign. At the end of the year, the Culture Minister, Kim Howells (an art school graduate) denounced the Turner Prize as "cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit". ^[6] Ivan Massow (born 1967) is a prominent businessman and British politician, formerly chairman of Londons Institute of Contemporary Arts. ... The ICA The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is a modern art centre on The Mall in London. ... The Tate Gallery in the United Kingdom is a network of four galleries: Tate Britain (opened 1897), Tate Liverpool (1988), Tate St Ives (1993), Tate Modern (2000), with a complementary website Tate Online (1998). ... Nicholas Serota Sir Nicholas Serota (born 1946) is a curator, and is currently Director of the Tate Gallery, the United Kingdoms national gallery of modern and British art. ... Dr Kim Scott Howells (born November 27, 1946 in Merthyr Tydfil) is a Labour politician in Wales, and member of Parliament for Pontypridd. ...

In October 2004 the Saatchi Gallery told the media that "painting continues to be the most relevant and vital way that artists choose to communicate."^[7] Following this Charles Saatchi began to sell prominent works from his YBA collection. The Saatchi Gallery building in Chelsea opens in early 2007 The Saatchi Gallery, a London gallery for contemporary modern art, was opened by Charles Saatchi in order to show his sizeable (and changing) collection to the public. ... Charles Saatchi Charles Saatchi (born June 9, 1943), is the founder of the global advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, which was the worlds biggest before he and his brother Maurice were forced to leave, and formed M&C Saatchi. ...

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (609x752, 70 KB)Big Boss, Solid Snake and Liquid Snake. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (609x752, 70 KB)Big Boss, Solid Snake and Liquid Snake. ...

Computer and Video Games

Computer games date back as far as 1947, although they didn’t reach much of an audience until the 1970s. The computer game industry is worth well over 10 billion dollars a year. It would be difficult and odd to deny that computer and video games include many kinds of art. The graphics of a video game constitute digital art, graphic art, and probably video art; the music of a video game clearly constitutes electronic music. However it is a point of debate whether the video game as a whole should be considered a piece of art of some kind, perhaps a form of interactive art. Namcos Pac-Man was a hit, and became a cultural phenomenon. ... Computer-generated image created by Gilles Tran using POV-Ray 3. ... Graphic design is the applied art of arranging image and text to communicate a message. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Electronic music is a term for music created using electronic devices. ... Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in some way. ...

Film critic Roger Ebert, for example, has gone on record claiming that video games are not art, and for structural reasons will always be inferior to cinema ^[8]. Likewise, video game designer Hideo Kojima has argued that video games are not art. ^[9] On the other side, video game designer Chris Crawford argues that video games are art^[10]. Esquire columnist Chuck Klosterman also argues that video games are art. ^[11] Roger Ebert (right) with Russ Meyer, 1970 Roger Joseph Ebert (born June 18, 1942) is a film critic who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times. ... Hideo Kojima Hideo Kojima (å°å³¶ç§€å¤« Kojima Hideo, born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer at Konami. ...

The cover of Vampire: The Masquerade (3rd edition) role playing game -- fair use This image is a book cover. ... The cover of Vampire: The Masquerade (3rd edition) role playing game -- fair use This image is a book cover. ... Vampire: The Masquerade (Revised Edition) cover. ...

Role-playing Games

Modern role-playing games were invented and popularized in the 1970s and were an important influence on the development of video games, indeed the popular genre computer role-playing games probably count as role-playing games and computer games at the same time. Other role-playing games are often acted out physically (called live-action role-playing games or enacted verbally in the style of a radio drama while consulting written notes (called “tabletop” or “pen and paper” role-playing games). The non-computer segment of the role-playing game market seems to be somewhere in the several 100 million dollar a year range. This article is about traditional role-playing games. ... This article is about traditional role-playing games. ... Computer role-playing games (CRPGs), often shortened to simply role-playing games (RPGs), are a type of video or computer game that traditionally use gameplay elements found in paper-and-pencil role-playing games. ... A live action role-playing game, or LARP as it is commonly known, is a form of role-playing game where the participants perform some or all of the physical actions of the characters they play the role of. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Again it would be hard to deny that many role-playing game products include graphic art or fiction. However some have asserted that the performance of a role-playing game sometimes constitutes a form of interactive fiction, or performance art or that the game design itself might count as art. Daniel Mackay, a sociologist, for example, argues that role-playing games are a performing art^[12]. Role-playing game designer Mike Pohjola, has founded the Turku School of role-playing which insists that roleplaying is an art form, and should emphasize its artistic aspects. ^[13] Contrariwise, philosopher David Novitz has argued that role-playing games are not art. (Novitz 1996). Graphic design is the applied art of arranging image and text to communicate a message. ... The Three Graces, here in a painting by Sandro Botticelli, were the goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility in Greek mythology. ... Zork, an early work of interactive fiction, running on a modern interpreter Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. ... Performance art is art where the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time, constitute the work. ...

Contents

The Definition of Art

Theories of art

Theory and disputes about art

Conceptual Art

Recent examples of disputed conceptual art

Controversy in the UK

Computer and Video Games

Role-playing Games

See also

References

Contents

The Definition of Art GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Theories of art

Theory and disputes about art

Conceptual Art

Recent examples of disputed conceptual art

Controversy in the UK

Computer and Video Games

Role-playing Games

See also

References

The Definition of Art