Art

The argument about what art is, is important. Definitions are important. In order to do good philosophy one is dependent on clear and simple definitions that maximize meaning.

Art: Any product of human creativity.

Of course there is good art and bad art. Art always reflects the creating culture, the more it says or implies about the culture, the better it is. A street gang is art. A garbage dump is art. A flower, being a natural object, is not art. It may be very beautiful, but beauty isn't art.

Art can be subdivided into conception and technique. Some artists, Vermeer say, or Rembrandt are spending most of their effort on technique. Technique is the method by which one presents his conception. Others spend all of their time on conception, photographers for instance.

My wife asked me, when confronted by an image of a nude: "Is that art or photography?" Her notion of what art is, is inadequate. For her, a painting is art but a photograph isn't. For her, it has to be hard to produce to be art and concept doesn't much enter into the question. But, with this idea of art, provided to her by the media, an endless argument ensues about what is and what isn't art. The definition of art thereby becomes less useful, since it can't be applied with any certainty.

There is nothing wrong with debating, and definitions can be debated as well as anything else. But, to debate a definition, one should consider what a definition is good for. It is good for explaining the world to the next generation. Bad definitions are confusing.

So, let us debate the dividing line between good and bad art, not the definition of art.

With this definition we can easily distinguish between good and bad art by asking ourselves how much we have learned by looking at it. Gangs, by this definition, are good art. Repetition reduces good art to bad art, thus, Rocky 18 is bad art, even though Rocky was good art.

Michaelangelo was a very good artist because he taught the viewer a very great deal in both content and technique. A still life may teach us a great deal about technique while it says nothing in terms of content. A photo tells us nothing about technique that we don't already know, but it may tell us a great deal in terms of content.

The attempt to divide the creative work of mankind into the product of artisans and artists fails because the line between the two is too vague and there is no simple definition with which we can distinguish the two.

The distinction between good and bad art is subjective because it varies from individual to individual. Dr. Seus may be very good art for a child and bad art for an adult.

This leads us to an extension of the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity. In general, when we identify objectivity we mean that an object will be described in the same way by all objective observers. Subjectivity is the reverse. Subjectivity will be a function of age and experience, which is to say that it takes age and experience to describe an object without adding material that is provided by the observer. Objectivity is valuable because it enhances the ability to communicate without confusing.