droqen's forum-shaped notebook

i had been walking for about and hour to meet a person who my partner had found on a local stuff-selling app (like craigslist or kijiji, but this one was called karrot) i knew this person only by

1. the transaction we were to perform at the appointed hour: $40 for a yellow sling bag -- which we had received essentially for free from the manufacturer on the grounds that we wanted it only for parts -- they even made us prove that we had purchased the bag previously by providing an order number before selling it to us for an extremely reduced price -- but then discovered
   a. the only thing wrong with the bag that they were selling "for parts" was a bit of dirt or makeup or something
   b. the bit of dirt of makeup or something was easily and completely washed off
   c. my partner didn't actually want to do the thing with the parts that she thought she wanted to do --

and 2. the person's username on karrot, which was "Moose."

when i met Moose, it turned out he was a man named Mustafa, which immediately explained most of the name (like -- when i met a guy who was wearing a shirt that said "burger" (well, it was "borger," but close enough, there was a picture of a burger) and it turned out his nickname was "burger" and the next time i saw him he was wearing a different shirt that said "burger" (and had a different picture of a different burger) -- but in reverse) and we performed the prophecied transaction. he handed me $40 (one twenty and four fives, i think) and then looked at the book i was reading at the time, ART & FEAR, (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=937.0) and asked something like, "do you like philosophy?" to which i of course responded by looking at the book i was reading at the time, which i now realize is mainly about the fear of not being as brilliant or well-regarded as Mozart but had not at the time quite realized that, (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?msg=4803) and said something like, "yes."

so the man who was buying the yellow sling bag from me, or Moose, or Mustafa, asked me if i wanted to go into another room with him to look at a bunch of philosophy books that he and one or more other unknown people (i did not know much about Moose-or-Mustafa, but i knew more about him than i knew about these one or more unknown other people -- he used only the collective pronoun "we," as in, "we are trying to get rid of all these philosophy books") ("for free," he added, seeing the suspicion on my face or whatever other reaction i was having) were trying to get rid of.

i said sure.

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i did not get any philosophy books because it turns out they had all been taken already. the man offered me many other items of lower value at no charge, and these items all burden me to this day. (they also burdened me all the way back home in a more physical, embodied sense. some of these lower value items were heavy.) but the one thing of real interest that i took away was a hold on a library book called What art is, on his recommendation. he knew the author, he said, Arthur Danto, and seemed to hold him in high regard.

i don't hold Danto in high regard, he's just a guy who i heard about once, but i'm ready to begin reading his book, What art is.

let's go.

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QuoteIt was basically decided by leading aestheticians that art was indefinable, since there is no overarching feature. My view is that it has to be a closed concept. There must be some overarching properties that explain why art in some form is universal. . . . I have tried, using Duchamp and Warhol to achieve my definition of art, to outline examples from the history of art to show that the definition always has been the same.

well, i'm interested. this is a good preface. it's short (4 pages) and in this space addresses the title of the book, promising: yes, we are actually here to realize the title of the book.

in the preface, Danto promises that "The first and longest chapter may feel like art history, but it is not."

i am skimming this chapter. i don't think that it is only art history, but in reading a chapter so dense with historical events, i am skimming. i am in a hurry, i am impatient.

what's art, Danto?

he touches on many ideas of what art is, many experiments, many hidden things. the moving picture, John Cage's 4'33", an old idea of art as literal representation -- at a time when accurate representation was so far from achievable.

what's art, Danto?

Quotep 20

Bringing reality into art, when reality had been what art was to represent, changed the way people through of art. It brings us to the substance of the question of "What art is" today. But there are issues I need to address before I can take on that question philosophically.

Quotep 36-37

. . . in what way did Andy's Factory-made boxes differ from factory-made boxes? That is, what differentiating visible properties separated them? . . . but . . . Externally, both sets were alike.
   My sense is that, if there were no visible differences, there had to have been invisible differences--not invisible like the Brillo pads packed in the Brillo boxes, but properties that were always invisible.

Quotep 37-38

In my first book on the philosophy of art I thought that works of art are about something, and I decided that works of art accordingly have meaning. We infer meanings, or grasp meanings, but meanings are not at all material. . . . Semantics uses external relations like "denotation" or "extension." But the kind of relationship art depends on is internal. The art embodies the meaning, or partially embodies it. . . . The artwork is a material object, some of whose properties belong to the meaning, and some of which do not. What the viewer must do is interpret the meaning-bearing properties in such a way as to grasp the intended meaning they embody.

ah, so Danto here is a dedicated author-is-alive-er.

Quotep 46-47

Warhol at first thought he would save money and labor by using ordinary cardboard boxes from the wholesaler. But the edges and corners were too soft and rounded.  They were inconsistent with his vision.  So he had to take the route of fabrication and stenciling. The stencil gave perfect similarity, but you could not stencil the physical properties of the box. Cardboard is perfect for shipping but not for geometry, whose properties Warhol wanted for his boxes. Sharp corners and edges, as Judd was aware, belong to a dream of exactitude.

i didn't know this. interesting.

Quotep 48-49

I . . . define art as "wakeful dreams." . . . everyone, everywhere, dreams. Usually this requires that we sleep. But wakeful dreams require of us that we be awake. . . . they can be shared. They are accordingly not private. . .

. . . One argument for the End of Art is that it rests on the fact that art and reality are in certain cases indiscernible. I thought if art and reality were indiscernible, we had somehow come to the end. Art and reality could and principle be visibly the same. But I had not realized at the time that the differences are invisible, . . . they [can] have different meanings and different embodiments.

"the End of Art"! Danto, a man after my own heart. i love proclaiming the end of things.

p.s. Danto is dead, so, the End of Danto has already occurred. may he rest in peace.

also, the first chapter is over. what do i think of it? {IV.} danto is trying to define art. that's the whole point of the book, right? he has laid his thoughts out here, constructing supporting evidence before making his point... i don't know, it gives me a smell like Keogh's The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist where he finally concludes the book after however many hundred pages with the full statement, "The videogame industry doesn't exist--at least not without an entire cultural field of videogame production to support it. (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?msg=2295)"

i'm going to skip now to the end past all of Danto's structure to see: does he get to the point?

chapter "THE END OF THE CONTEST"
the title of this chapter refers, at first, to the contest between different art forms, in particular painting vs photography
on p 115:

QuoteThe great thing about the sixties was the dawning recognition that anything could be a work of art

i.e. as long as it is a waking dream, as long as it is an object imbued with meaning or which embodies meaning.
you can do or choose to do this with anything, any medium, any object.
i get it.

Quotewhy weren't [the original Brillo boxes] artworks if Andy's Factory-produced boxes were? I have answered this in my first chapter

ok, this is good. this is good. i think that it's a very good thing that Danto refers back to the first chapter: he isn't going to rug-pull me in the conclusion and say, oh, here's what i really meant this whole time. no, he opens with his idea of what art is. the rest of the book is just... exploration of a space. beautiful! i love it! as a structure, i really love this.

so how does he end it?

oh hell yeah

Quotep 146

   I have said at times that if the indiscernible objects--Brillo Box and the Brillo carton--were perceptually alike, they must be aesthetically alike as well, but I no longer believe this true, mainly because of having brought some better philosophy to bear on the issue.

fascinating. i like this. i believe that what Danto is referring to here is the aesthetics of the invisible, that is, the aesthetics of the meaning and its embodiment, not only of the material object but the way that the meaning is attached to the object. i like also that Danto refers again and again to the same work, Brillo Box, and to the same concepts, visiting and revisiting differently. this is a good way to show the depth of a concept.

Quotep 149

My theory, in brief, is that works of art are embodied meanings. Because of works like Warhol's Brillo Box, Icould not claim that aesthetics is part of the definition of art. That is not to deny that aesthetics is part of art! It is definitely a feature. . .

p 150-151

. . . it is . . . false to say that aesthetics is the point of visual art. . . . But if aesthetics is not the point of art, what is the point of aesthetics?
   This is too swift. I don't want to deny that there may be art, the point of which is aesthetic. . . but I can say that most of the art being made today does not have the provision of aesthetic experience as its main goal. And I don't think that was the main goal of most of the art made in the course of art history. . . . Now, it would be a major transformation in artistic practice if artists were to begin making art, the point and purpose f which was aesthetic experience. That would really be a revolution.

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okay, this was quite a good book. i skimmed, i skipped great portions, and i may yet return to it for i've left it full of holes.
i like the way it ends. i like its structure: i find it quite inspiring. not as inspiring as Christopher Alexander's book-structures, but, usually i come away from a book sort of irritated with how they chose to lay out their ideas. not so with What art is.

i enjoyed my time with the book and i found the final chapter interesting, thought-provoking.