Is lit an art? Why is it so rarely counted in with the other arts?

>>9306414
just an academic department thing

because it is difficult to produce

Why in every other genre of music a median is known as a musician.......except in "grime"...they're "grime artists" apparently.

I'd rather be a writer then an artist..... but first and foremost i am a reader.

>>9306414
Historically, the term art is retroactive. We might consider cave paintings to be art, but whoever made them surely had other concepts to describe their activity.

When we say "art", we do not mean the original latin word which could translate to 'skill' or 'craft'. We are referring to the notion that came about in the Renaissance of the "Hierarchy of Art" in which Drawing was the lesser art beneath Sculpture, Painting and Architecture. The earliest forms of proper "Art History" come from this period.

Over the course of the last few hundred years, the term has expanded.

Today it is less relevant to ask "Is X activity art?" than it is to ask "how do you define art?" or "How did that person, in their specific time and place, define art?"

Literature is surely an art, only because such distinction is meaningless. All human activity deserves attention and investigation, art or not.

>>9306459
Ah re-reading that, I want to clarify one thing.

The term Art is invented to subjugate drawing beneath painting, sculpture and architecture.

Any attempt to say something is or isn't art, is just an attempt to credit or discredit the activity.

And any activity is worthy of investigation and critique. So, if you ask me, the term Art no longer has a purpose, except in colloquial senses, when you want to talk about an Art Museum or the Art Section of the Library.

>>9306477
Ughhh
Postmodernist spotted

>>9306501
at least anon is adding content to this thread

>>9306441
They are MC's. 'grime artist' is a term used by guardian columnists

>>9306515
>at least anon is adding content to this thread

THANKS.

>>9306501
But yeah, got a better "modernist" definition of Art? And will it not fall into the trap of defining certain cultural activities of the ancient world as Art while ignoring others?

Are you the type that is willing to call a greek clay vessel art but not ancient greek armor?

Either way, I think my definition is the only satisfactory one. Any theory of Art needs to account for the historical discrepancies (and lack of) definition or art in different times and places.

>>9306501
Shut up you fucking parroting swine. Stop pretending to be bothered when it's clear you basically either don't understand or care about that word, you are just trying to fit in.

Is this photograph real?

File: prince-harry---1296582432-view-0.jpg (45KB, 460x615px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 460x615px

>>9306602
It is making me immensely angry. Harry should have them all killed and take the throne, and purge parliament.

File: germanys_sculptor5b.jpg (51KB, 402x600px) Image search: [Google]

51KB, 402x600px

>>9306578
I mean, to defend my attacker, he is right. My definition of Art is pretty post-modern, in the sense that it eschews an objective position and instead looks at the multiplicity of historical positions.

I just think anyone who ascribes to a modernist definition of art is going to look super silly, saying things about "the objective nature of objects" or how all art is "line and form" or some other reductive, psuedo-scientific nonsense.

Maybe he'll reply with some kind of classical appeal to Beauty. I tolerate that position more, except that when it comes to understanding the "deployment of beauty" we're going to need a bigger toolbox of ideas than Raphael and DaVinci had.

Case in point, this nice homo-erotic nazi sculpture. Beautiful, for sure.

>>9306564
>I think my definition is the only satisfactory one.
What definition? You just avoided giving one by saying it's pointless

>>9306616
>Any attempt to say something is or isn't art, is just an attempt to credit or discredit the activity.

This is my definition. The word art is a value signifier, like 'Luxury', applied to something.

You've got Art Porn, Art Cars, Art Films, Artisanal Foods, etc. Art isn't a noun, it's an adjective applied to an activity.

How it has been deployed historically is very interesting, but today it only signifies "value".

>>9306614
The thing is, even that Platonic idea of beauty as a form in itself SEEMS objective on the surface, but for me even admitting that some people (aka the Guardians) could access it and others couldn't suggests an inherent post-modernism, that is, if some people see the meta-narrative and others don't, then how could we ever know it as a meta-narrative and not just another opinion.

Post-modernism isn't an emotional appeal to me, it is the only unarguably logical and rational position.

>>9306667
What about the artistic process? You were talking about techné before, surely we can say that there are some activities that can be considered artistic (painting, sculpture) and others (biology, religion, politics) that are not, but we are not devaluing science by saying it's not art.

Unless by value signifier you mean a special kind of value (that is, aesthetic value)

>>9306687
But some people do say that a person's work in a scientific field is "artful" and this is a colloquially valid thing to say.

>>9306564
While I've certainly encountered better definitions of art, but I applaud you for thinking about it.

I'm personally compelled by Danto's classifications for art. It's similar to what you're saying, though not quite. He contends that art began as imitative and, over the course of time, its constraints were challenged by different movements (impressionism, modernism, futurism, etc). This can be applied to the novel, painting, whatever. Eventually, manifested by Duchamp and the like, we have come to realize that there are no philosophical constraints on what 'art' can be, and this realization signals the end of the master narrative of art's development. However, Danto wouldn't call everything art.

In order to be art, it must have value conferred upon it by an institution.l that wields power and, in turn, be appreciated by an audience. Thus, while everything CAN be art, not everything IS art. This institutional theory of art is found in or has influenced many aesthetic theories such as Dickie's or Walton's.

>>9306699
Yeah they also say that Morandi had a scientific precision in his drawings but I don't think this means that he was doing science was he

>>9306687
Someday, we might see Religion as art. We surely see religious objects and activities of past cultures as art objects today. Cave Painting probably had a spiritual/religious function, an invocation for hunting, an attempt to visualize the hunt and then actualize it.

Scientists love it when their work is compared to art. They don't have need of the signifier, as the word Science already has a lot of implicit value and authority. But I often hear stories about how "When I first saw the fetus at 11 days old, it was Beautiful" or all of the mythopoetic jargon that gets tossed around about planets and supernovas. Scientists love to appropriate artistic/aesthetic jargon and apply it to their own field.

I'm not saying they're necessarily wrong to do this. They want to express their emotions around their field, but Science doesn't give them a language for expressing such emotions.

To piggyback on >>9306706 Danto has some great passages on Warhol's Brillo Boxes that explain (much better) what I was trying to get at here >>9306687

While the commercial product and the artwork are basically indistinguishable in the readymade, one of them has a "Schein" while the other is a mere product. In a way it's like the Christian doctrine of transmutation: grabbing an object from the free trade of goods and turning it into an artwork. The role of Art, and of Warhol, is almost mystical in this view

>>9306706
Yeah, I'd agree with your reply, except I think this is a definition of Art History, more than it is Art. Or rather, you can only have historical definitions of what art was in a given place and time, you can make hypotheses about what art was when you don't know for sure (cave paintings) and you could even make predictions about how it might get defined in the future.

Today, I generally only see Art used as a short-hand or adjective (art gallery, art museum). Most theories that try to say this is and this isn't Art, are pretty useless.

>>9306746
>Most theories that try to say this is and this isn't Art, are pretty useless.
Well, I would probably disagree, though it depends on what you mean by 'useless.' There is plenty good theory on Aesthetics if you know where to look. Some even questions whether or not art can be classified at all, which you may like more.

That said, you seem primarily concerned with colloquial usage of the word 'art' and how this usage has changed over time. Certainly an interesting thought. I'm not sure how much hypothesizing we have to do concerning the history of the word, for it's been recorded for some time (Aristotle, Shaftesbury, Lessing, etc). If you're interested in how it's being used now, I suppose it's used, as so many words are, in a variety of circumstances that denote different things. It depends on the context. However, if someone says, I'm going to look at 'art', clearly the usage of the word suggests a specific and contained idea, at least in the mind of the individual speaking.