RE: [-empyre-] Re: Method Manifesto

[j.abbate@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au]

In message <200209260210.g8Q2ATi78154@i1.broadserver.jp> nakazawa@aloalo.co.jp (Hideki Nakazawa)
 writes:
> At 1330 20020926, Jim Andrews wrote:
> 
> > I don't understand what is authoritarian or reactionary in saying that an individual can be at
> > least as trustworthy as an institution concerning opinions about art. As for who or what
> > determines what art is, I would say that as people seriously engaged in art, we try to do as
> > much of that for ourselves as we can, but also listen to others. Regardless of insitutions and
> > power structures that can 'push' to larger audiences, good ideas and art spread primarily by
> > individual consent and acknowledgement, not via institutional push and 'say so'. It is still up
> > to individuals to make up their own minds and hopefully that will stay the case.
> 
> hi ja,
> I suppose maybe this argument is linked to the theory of "art world" by 
> somebody (just forgot the name) ... maybe jsa knows (because he has already 
> used the word "art world" before...).

Arthur Danto. Roughly, and its been a long time since I read it, the argument 
goes that everybody has some working definition of art that works fine until
some object comes along that draws the attention of the community of the 
artworld that defies that definition. In this event, if the object is accepted
as a new variety of art-object this means that something new may be predicated of 
a work of art, eg. this work of art is ephemeral, where before "ephemeral"
was not something that could be predicated of an artwork. Now artists may
be doing this all the time, but it is not until this new predicate is
taken up by the artworld, entering the general discursive formations of this
community, that we can determine the new object to be art. Its a bit like new words that
enter the Oxford English Dictionary only after a number of published instances
from various sources. Until then, the new word is not widely considered part
of the language.

BTW, I don't necessarily subscribe to this view, but it does contain elements
of the truth, so to speak.

jsa



-- 
    j.
---------- 
  abbate