"Art" is "better than I can do", no matter the medium.
A Shakespearean sonnet is certainly in that category.
Modern free verse might fare better if delivered by the author on YouTube.
A Shakespearean sonnet is certainly in that category.
Modern free verse might fare better if delivered by the author on YouTube.
High art as something I couldn't have imagined existing until I had seen it.
It's just that I don't wanna, and I appreciate other people's efforts more than my own, etc.
Art is not about effort -> result, it's an interesting combination of factors.
My own framing: art isn't an object, it's an experience. I call an object _intended_ to trigger art experiences an art-object, but people often have art experiences that don't involve an art-object.
I think this framing makes it clearer that you could copy an art-object that previously gave you an art experience with perfect fidelity and not end up with an object that gives _you_ an art experience (though it help others have an art experience).
It's just that really banal poetry/music/writing (looking at you, Country/Western) doesn't motivate me once you drop below, say Marty Robbins.
I dislike this definition because it conflates mechanical skill with meaning. I cannot replicate a Thomas Kinkade painting. But I don't care to either, because his work does absolutely nothing for me.
> High art as something I couldn't have imagined existing until I had seen it.
I like this more, but it also sort of conflates novelty with insight.
To me, the best art shows me a detailed picture of something I have experienced but been unable to perceive clearly. It is like someone painted a picture of my own soul. Like a light has been turned on in some dark corner of my psychology where I had been stumbling for years.
Not to say just anyone will be Shakespeare, but much of what makes art great is the fact you can't see the process that lead them to the end. I've had things that people loved but felt "normal" to me because I remember the map of the route I took to get there. All they saw was the end result.
In the Middle Ages, Kunst actually meant something like engineering, too. For example, Wasserkunst was the name for a water distribution system.
The origin is the proto-germanic word kunnan, which means “to recognise, to know (how to be able)”.
According to Wikipedia, the first known usage of the phrase by the German poet Johann Gottfried Herder is actually a bit more complex and references both the knowing and the being able to:
“Kunst kommt von Können oder Kennen her (nosse aut posse), vielleicht von beiden, wenigstens muß sie beides in gehörigem Grad verbinden. Wer kennt, ohne zu können, ist ein Theorist, dem man in Sachen des Könnens kaum trauet; wer kann ohne zu kennen, ist ein bloßer Praktiker oder Handwerker; der echte Künstler verbindet beides.”
Quick and dirty translation:
“Art is derived from being able to do and knowing, maybe from both, at least art must combine both in proper measure. Who knows, without being able, is a theorist, whom one cannot trust with regards to being able to do; Who can without knowing, is a mere practician or craftsman; the real artist connects both.”
By the way, I don’t know you, I don’t want to offend you and the very little info I have from your comment is evidence that you’re a intelligent, well educated, open-minded and complex person…. but to be honest, when I see the phrase “Kunst kommt von Können” my first association is of a narrow-minded square, who doesn’t like anything they are not familiar with. Again, this is not directed at you, I just wanted to share what kind of associations this phrase creates in me in general from my personal, limited experience with people, who used it.
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> association is of a narrow-minded square
German (married to one, not a real student of the language) makes a useful distinction between kennen and lernen[1], the latter of which seems more likely to be hidebound, since the knowledge isn't fully internalized yet.
But, in my opinion, even if a definition could capture what’s art, it won’t be a lazy definition like "Art" is "better than I can do”. Art cannot be limited like that and there are many things people do “better than I can do”, which are not art.
Art has a long and complex history of grappling and negotiating with the role of skill, perspectives range from equating art with skill, over seeing skill as a tool for carrying out a vision to a conscious rejection of virtuosity. Even the rejection of virtuosity can create great art.
For example in dance, my profession, there are whole fields like postmodern dance or non-dance, which reject traditional dance skills, and non-dance artists like Jerome Bel create amazing, touching art, by authentically showing people failing to do “better than I can do”.
(Although you could maybe argue that in this case the artistry is just shifted to another level, the level of composition and ideas instead of the dance itself.)
To see one example of how an artist reflects on the importance of skill/virtuosity in art, here’s an excerpt from Jonathan Burrows “A choregrapher’s handbook”:
“Virtuosity is just another way to help the audience to care what happens next.
Virtuosity raises the stakes to a place where the audience knows something may go wrong. They enjoy watching this negotiation with disaster. Will the performer fall, or forget what they’re doing, or will they get through it?
The resulting anticipation, poised on the brink of success or failure, suspends time in a moment of in-breath. This slowed-down time, in the midst of risk, is as much of a pleasure for the performer as for the audience.
However, if everything is virtuosic then there’s nothing against which to read the virtuosity: it has to be in balance with other modes of engagement.”
Sure, "better than I can do" is a going-in position, like my default review of anything: "It would have been twice as good if it was half as long".
I like the stated concept of virtuosity. But once the artist is sufficiently decoupled from the structure of the event by their refined genius, are not all 'mistakes' demoted to 'variation'?