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Thoughts on art.

*work in progress*

Power to the imagination.

Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking

-Situationists inspired graffiti from May 968.

Consider this from The Pig that wants to be eaten book. Thought experiment No 86: Art for Art's

sake: A valuable piece of art-Michaelangelo's David- has been found but to release it to the world

will destroy it.It's underneath a newly built hospital. Should it be left alone or should it moved and

destroyed? Is art valuable inherently or does it need a viewer? if art is inherently valuable doesn't

that museums might as well always be shut?

I see no point in aesthetics as a subject of philosophy. In the past it merely functioned as a defence

of cultural norms .

Creativity for me is fun, adventurous, spontaneous, a leap into the dark, like love blindness, like your

first kiss, like losing your virginity, like visiting somewhere for the first time.

Art provides one of the best forms of Phenomenology there is.It is also the best kind of Sociology

there is.

Poetry cannot be constrained, restrained, to 10 or even 30 styles or forms. It will always burst free.

Art also. Creativity is 'sacred'.

I think John Dewey is right that art is about experience. I would add that the reason academic

discussion of art sometimes fails is that it is separated from the experience of art.

What is it that I seek when I read a poem, when I write a poem? Above all, I desire an experience,

a mode of experience available to me only through poetry. "The reading of a poem should be an

experience [like experiencing an act]. Its writing must be all the more so," - Wallace Stevens.

I oppose attempts to be prescriptive about what should be considered art and attempts to be

prescriptive about what arts purpose is i.e. I oppose essentialist theories of art .

Art should be thought of as culturally and historically defined . There is not a fixed definition of

what art is, nor could there be. We call something art as a label to invite discussion and demand

something be considered in a certain way. The differences between pieces of art are more like

Wittgenstein's family resemblance than a prescriptive list of necessary and sufficient conditions.

Art has no absolute universal fixed platonic purpose which can be prescribed to it or imposed on

it. Arts purpose comes from it's creators- the artist, the audience and the rest of humanity. Art can

have an unlimited amount of purposes-that is assuming it has purpose at all.

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I agree (to an extent) with Bourdieu that taste is culturally and historically conditioned.

art is not and never could be 'apolitical' which is akin to saying art could be context less. The

creation, production, consumption and production of art interacts with the existing capitalist systemand cannot be truly revolutionary in breaking with the system no matter how radical it's message.as

Pierre Bourdieu argues, what is considered art and what is considered good/bad art cannot be

separated from class/ power relations. Previous essentialist theories of art failed to consider this.

Art is institutionalised, funded and worshipped by people with ridiculous amounts of money

while if anyone was creating art in the street they'd need a license or be arrested.

What's wrong with Art galleries? (may not apply to all art galleries and museums)

Often present and represent art in a commodified often sanitized way which is notchallenging for the establishment.

They promote the institutional theory of art which says that what is in an art gallery must beart or 'good art' while whatever is not and is by implication not art or not good art. That

ends up being elitist, selective, conservative and pretentious. What is then considered art

ends up being defined by small elite group of likely wealthy white western men.

Following on from that, art by the working class/women/people of colour/ political art tendsto get ignored. There's a bias towards older white western middle class men.

Promotes a very limited set of styles and schools and excludes/neglects others(thoughsometimes I wonder if it's for the best)

Promotes the idea of a High vs. low art distinction which I don't like much.I don't muchaccept the distinction between 'high' and 'low' art. Seems politically motivated.

The institutional theory of art doesn't make a lot of sense-http://www.stuckismwales.co.uk/theory/tblast/institutional.php

The money which surrounds the art establishment is obscene. Paying to view art is bizarre. Itshould be open to all.

Promotion of art which feels removed in relevance to most people's modern everyday lifes.art belongs to it's creators I.e. to everyone, to all of humanity. I oppose copyright(while

understanding it's a well intentioned attempt to prevent plagiarism) and prefer creative commons,

open source or anti-copyright.

I think everyone has the potential to be creative but it is repressed in current society or channelled

to suit it's needs. Therefore I feel unsure about whether I should call myself a poet or artist since I do

not think I have any monopoly on creativity nor do I think I am a specialist in creativity. For practical

uses as shorthand though it is useful.

It quickly becomes clear that because of the instability of meaning, because of Polysemy("the

capacity for a sign (e.g., a word, phrase, etc.) or signs to have multiple related meanings ") , it's

almost impossible to actually express something meaningless. So nothing is absolutely surrealist. The

project of surrealism can never completely succeed.

http://www.stuckismwales.co.uk/theory/tblast/institutional.phphttp://www.stuckismwales.co.uk/theory/tblast/institutional.phphttp://www.stuckismwales.co.uk/theory/tblast/institutional.php

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http://ideologicalart.wordpress.com/situationist/

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/report.html

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/index.htm