Are Jackson Pollock's Paintings Art?

[Tommy Jeppesen]

I never said anything about dictionaries. A definition IS a social convention. Words have meaning because we agree that they have those meanings. A word without meaning is useless, and that's what you are proposing if you say that art is whatever the maker says it is. It's pretty much the opposite of a definition, and therefore it can't be discussed or agreed upon.

Okay, Belz... I am in a combative mood, so now we are going to "fight over words using words". That is what you do and now I am going to "beat" you. In short a "word" consists of 3 aspects: That someone understands it, it has a physical representation/it is a sign and it refers to something/it is about something.
Now you confuse the 3rd aspect, because you mix the different ways in which words can be about something.

Take the word "meter" - it is an operational word, which describes an actual behavior related to an observable phenomenon using instruments and so on; the international scientific measurement standard for a meter. The word "meter" tells you, I and everybody else what we ought to do, provided that we do the same thing, when we use the word "meter".

Now the word "table" - it is an concrete word, which is about a physical object. That is it in short.

So now you describe what the word "art" is about. Not to you individually nor to me or anybody else as singular individually. You describe what the word "art" refers to. Can you do that, Belz...?

Well, you can't. because you mix up the fact that art is something to you, but maybe not the same to another human. It is rather telling that you used the words "meter" and "table". The first one is a collective word; it requires a group of persons, who agree on what makes a "meter" a "meter" and requires the same behavior in regards to the concrete physical world. The second one is a concrete thing. If we removed all humans, the thing would still be there. But not the word "art", there would be no art, if there were no humans and what art is, is subjective. Art requires as a minimum an intention in the artist about that the art "piece" should "produce" a first person emotional experience. There is more to the word "art", but what I mentioned as a necessary part of the word "art" if you want to describe and explain that art is about.

But it doesn't stop here - let me explain to you, why we fight over words. We do it, because they can in some cases "convey" authority. But the fun doesn't stop there - since you are good at words, would you please describe and explain the word "useless" and just for the fun the word "useful". In fact we are doing evolution in practice. The 4 Fs of biology; resources, revenge and prestige and this set of words: Harm, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, and purity.
So try this - analyze the words "useless" and "useful" using the above words and what is "behind" them.
BTW - do the same with the words "we" and "them".

 

[arthwollipot]

Most of the time, it is pretty clear what "art" means, and everyone can agree on it. But like a number of other concepts, it gets fuzzy around the edges.

 

[angrysoba]

Most of the time, it is pretty clear what "art" means, and everyone can agree on it. But like a number of other concepts, it gets fuzzy around the edges.

And indeed, with art sometimes the point is to challenge the previously accepted limits of art and expand it.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Most of the time, it is pretty clear what "art" means, and everyone can agree on it. But like a number of other concepts, it gets fuzzy around the edges.

Yes, indeed. But like the word aesthetics it is cultural, what leaning it gets.

 

[Belz...]

You said it needs a definition. I am saying that if someone says "this is art" and people agree (don't forget that bit) then it is art.

Same thing with a chair. But if you ask someone "what's a chair ?", and they tell you "whatever people agree is a chair", you're not answering the question.

Other people in this thread have been pulling up claims that art must conform to "a definition". Now you are saying that a definition is merely a social convention. In which case, if I say, "this is art", and someone agrees then it is, by definition, art.

I think you're a bit confused about what a definition is.

And by the way, "a word without meaning is useless" - WRONG! There are a lot of functional grammatical terms that don't have meanings as such, but have uses, such as "as", "a", "to", "of" etc...

Yes, and they all have definitions. So... WRONG !

 

[angrysoba]

Same thing with a chair. But if you ask someone "what's a chair ?", and they tell you "whatever people agree is a chair", you're not answering the question.

I don't see the relevance.

I think you're a bit confused about what a definition is.

Nice bare assertion that. Care to argue your case?

Yes, and they all have definitions. So... WRONG !

You said, "a word without meaning is useless". You may need to go back and read what you said.

Now, can you tell me what the definition of "art" is? Or "music"?

If you cannot, or don't have one, then you demonstrate that you don't need a definition.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Was my stated assumption correct?

No. I am not an ignorant, uneducated, naive pig farmer. I know some people in this thread desperately wish I was, but I'm not.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Like all discussions that are both fascinating and frustrating "What is art" is largely semantics and categorization. Given that a standard disclaimer (a shouldn't have to be stated but if I don't some pedantic twit will nitpick everything to death because it makes them feel smart disclaimer) of "it's not an exact science" and "grey area" and "BOCTAOE" and so forth are hereby acknowledged...

To me at least art is anything that is done with an all or mostly aesthetic, as opposed to utilitarian, purpose. If it's primary purpose to be interesting, engaging, attractive, or to inspire a mood on a sensory level and it's secondary functions are either non-existent or extremely minor, it's probably safe to call it art.

If something has a utilitarian purpose and you add aesthetics to it, I'd tend more to call that "design" or similar concept, not art. All though of course you could argue that design is a subset of art of they are both subset of a larger aesthetic concepts.

The closest I get to comfortably arguing that something isn't art is when it only works as art when you call it art. Like when you take a normal eveyday object and put it an art gallery and call it art. Like a payphone or a shoe isn't art, so it can't magically become art just because you are calling it art.

But on the other hand that brings up the even more nebulous concept of "performance art." Does a shoe in art gallery become art because you say it is, therefore it has a message and a meaning and a purpose which then qualifies it as art? Ehhhhh maybe. Personally I lean more toward the idea that art needs to stand on its own and if you to be seen as art you have to know it's backstory that's less clear. Maybe you could call the whole package, including it's creation, art, again back to "performance art" but not the thing itself. But it's an interesting idea to talk about. (Slight hijack: Could a discussion or speech or debate be art? Interesting...)

Like if I didn't know what the Mona Lisa was and I saw it for the first time... I would know it was art. My knowledge of the painting's place in history, it's backstory, hell the rather interesting life of the actual painting itself, all add to it, but it's not require for me to look at the painting and basically go "Yep. That's art."

But show me a mirror painted red and I'm not going to immediately know it's art and I'm sure as hell not gonna pay 750,000 for it.

So yeah I won't lie and say I don't get the same eye-rolly feeling as a lot of people when I hear that a 8.5 x 10 foot canvas of blue paint with a single white line sold for 44 million or "Non-existent art" for 10,000 a piece or 50 dollars for a small plastic cube filled with garbage from the streets of New York.

It is sorta... not exactly pretentious which is the go to word to describe much of the art world and while I can get why it has gotten that reputation I don't think it really applies to what I am saying... but more willfully obtuse to pretend why some people might not see a unmade bed stained with menstrual blood isn't a 150,000 dollar work of art.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It is sorta... not exactly pretentious which is the go to word to describe much of the art world and while I can get why it has gotten that reputation I don't think it really applies to what I am saying... but more willfully obtuse to pretend why some people might not see a unmade bed stained with menstrual blood isn't a 150,000 dollar work of art.

The behavior strikes me as almost, hell very, cult-like.

 

[angrysoba]

The closest I get to comfortably arguing that something isn't art is when it only works as art when you call it art. Like when you take a normal eveyday object and put it an art gallery and call it art. Like a payphone or a shoe isn't art, so it can't magically become art just because you are calling it art.

But on the other hand that brings up the even more nebulous concept of "performance art." Does a shoe in art gallery become art because you say it is, therefore it has a message and a meaning and a purpose which then qualifies it as art? Ehhhhh maybe. Personally I lean more toward the idea that art needs to stand on its own and if you to be seen as art you have to know it's backstory that's less clear. Maybe you could call the whole package, including it's creation, art, again back to "performance art" but not the thing itself. But it's an interesting idea to talk about. (Slight hijack: Could a discussion or speech or debate be art? Interesting...)

Like if I didn't know what the Mona Lisa was and I saw it for the first time... I would know it was art. My knowledge of the painting's place in history, it's backstory, hell the rather interesting life of the actual painting itself, all add to it, but it's not require for me to look at the painting and basically go "Yep. That's art."

But show me a mirror painted red and I'm not going to immediately know it's art and I'm sure as hell not gonna pay 750,000 for it.

Indeed, but I think it is better to think of art as something similar to what Wittgenstein referred to as "family resemblances". In his original characterization, Wittgenstein used the concept of game and asked what it was.

66 Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games". I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? -- Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games' "-but look and see whether there is anything common to all. -- For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look! --

Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships.

Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear.

When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost.-- Are they all 'amusing'? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis.

Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! sometimes similarities of detail.

And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.

And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and cries-crossing: sometimes overall similarities.

67 I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and cris-cross in the same way.-And I shall say: 'games' form a family.

And for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has a-direct-relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some on e fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.

But if someone wished to say: "There is something common to all these constructions-namely the disjunction of all their common properties" --I should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as well say: "Something runs through the whole thread- namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres".

I would think of art in precisely the same manner; looking for the common characteristic of all of these things is a fool's errand and those who bleat "but there must be a definition or we couldn't talk about it" is essentially contradicting themselves, because we can talk about it right now as we are.

As for the example of the Mona Lisa, this is a very fine example, and I think it is what linguists, largely following the insights of Wittgenstein and others, have come to refer to as "Prototype Theory", which is to say that many concepts have very fuzzy boundaries, are nonetheless concepts despite their fuzziness, but also have very clear and obvious exemplars.

As formulated in the 1970s by Eleanor Rosch and others, prototype theory was a radical departure from traditional necessary and sufficient conditions as in Aristotelian logic, which led to set-theoretic approaches of extensional or intensional semantics. Thus instead of a definition based model - e.g. a bird may be defined as elements with the features [+feathers], [+beak] and [+ability to fly], prototype theory would consider a category like bird as consisting of different elements which have unequal status - e.g. a robin is more prototypical of a bird than, say a penguin. This leads to a graded notion of categories, which is a central notion in many models of cognitive science and cognitive semantics, e.g. in the work of George Lakoff (Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, 1987) or Ronald Langacker (Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1/2 1987/1991).

So yeah I won't lie and say I don't get the same eye-rolly feeling as a lot of people when I hear that a 8.5 x 10 foot canvas of blue paint with a single white line sold for 44 million or "Non-existent art" for 10,000 a piece or 50 dollars for a small plastic cube filled with garbage from the streets of New York.

It is sorta... not exactly pretentious which is the go to word to describe much of the art world and while I can get why it has gotten that reputation I don't think it really applies to what I am saying... but more willfully obtuse to pretend why some people might not see a unmade bed stained with menstrual blood isn't a 150,000 dollar work of art.

I certainly wouldn't blame you if you were to say, "This looks crap and does nothing for me!" or "I can't believe people would pay good money for that *****!" and I would often say the same thing.

Where I object is when someone says, "It can't be art!" or "You must define it in some way!"

These objections are actually fundamentally ignorant of linguistics and pragmatics.

Of course, I realize that you are not making those particular claims.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Ironically we may be getting into the semantics of semantics here, but I think there is a distinct difference between a concept not having a definition (which I think is pretty my by definition logically impossible) and a concept having a nebulous definition that we can't currently in our language verbalize exactly for it to be useful.

"If it didn't exist as a concept (i.e. have a definition) we couldn't talk about" isn't accurate but it isn't entirely wrong either. I mean art as a concept does mean something and somethings have to fall under that concept and other things cannot or it isn't a concept.

"I can't define but I know it when I see it" is an acceptance of the fact that we can't yet define art, not proof that art by definition can't have a definition (and oh god now I've gone crossed eye...)

But regardless I think we're on the same page for the most part.

 

[Belz...]

I don't see the relevance.

You really don't ? It's really simple: can you apply the same logic to chairs or other words, or does this only apply to 'art' ?

Nice bare assertion that. Care to argue your case?

You know, not every statement of personal opinion needs to be presented as a scientific theory.

You said, "a word without meaning is useless". You may need to go back and read what you said.

I know I said that. Words are only useful when they have meaning. Garblargog ! There. How is that word useful if no one, not even me, knows what it means ?

Now, can you tell me what the definition of "art" is? Or "music"?

I probably can, yes. But right now I'd like to finish one conversation before launching into another.

If you cannot, or don't have one, then you demonstrate that you don't need a definition.

That doesn't follow at all.

 

[angrysoba]

You really don't ? It's really simple: can you apply the same logic to chairs or other words, or does this only apply to 'art' ?

I think it depends on what the words are actually. As it happens, if someone asked you for a definition of "chair" would you come up with one? Personally, I would point to some examples and hope that the listener got the idea. That's what's known as "pragmatics". Here, look it up.

You know, not every statement of personal opinion needs to be presented as a scientific theory.

I'd prefer it if you backed up your accusations, otherwise it seems to be a little bit like acting like a dick.

I know I said that. Words are only useful when they have meaning. Garblargog ! There. How is that word useful if no one, not even me, knows what it means ?

You haven't made your point, have you? If I said words are only words if they are spelt with vowels, and then "proved" it by typing out "klllklmnlkplspljslps" and triumphantly declaring that that's not got any vowels so obviously all words must have vowels.

If I were to do that, I would look like an idiot, and that's what you have done with your made up word. Just because Garblargog is a uselss and meaningless word, it doesn't follow that all words which have no meaning are useless.

For example, the word "hello!" has no meaning; it is a phatic expression - here, you can look that up as well - and various other grammatical words don't have semantic content in and of themselves. They merely function as relations between other words or as discourse markers.

I probably can, yes. But right now I'd like to finish one conversation before launching into another.

Consider it finished, because I am not interested in this tedious exchange any more. I have said my piece in the post just upthread referencing Wittgenstein.

さよなら！

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Hi Belz...

Seem to recall a similar problem with pornography or rather how to define it.

 

[Meed]

As for the example of the Mona Lisa, this is a very fine example, and I think it is what linguists, largely following the insights of Wittgenstein and others, have come to refer to as "Prototype Theory", which is to say that many concepts have very fuzzy boundaries, are nonetheless concepts despite their fuzziness, but also have very clear and obvious exemplars.

Psychologists have done a lot of empirical research in this area and largely rejected the idea that we have rule-based (i.e. definitional) representations of concepts, except perhaps in some limited situations (but even then the rule would only comprise part of our representation of the concept). Whether prototype theory, exemplar theory, or something else is the answer is less clear. Murphy's "The Big Book of Concepts" gives a good overview.

 

[Belz...]

I think it depends on what the words are actually. As it happens, if someone asked you for a definition of "chair" would you come up with one?

Yes. It's a self-standing tool for people to sit on and which has a back.

Every word we use is defined in its use. Otherwise it means nothing, and is therefore not useful in conversation.

I'd prefer it if you backed up your accusations

Again, you seem confused. It's not an accusation. It's my interpretation of your responses to me.

You haven't made your point, have you?

I have. Show me one word that has no meaning.

If I said words are only words if they are spelt with vowels, and then "proved" it by typing out "klllklmnlkplspljslps" and triumphantly declaring that that's not got any vowels so obviously all words must have vowels.

Yeah, that's not what I did. At all. Seems I don't need to back my "accusation", here.

If I were to do that, I would look like an idiot, and that's what you have done with your made up word.

A nice, not-so-subtle way of saying that I look like an idiot.

For example, the word "hello!" has no meaning

Of course it does. It's an informal greeting.

Consider it finished, because I am not interested in this tedious exchange any more.

Drama queen. You're the one who's caught up in semantics. Don't blame me for the tediousness. And don't ragequit because I didn't obey your demand.

 

[luchog]

And by the way, "a word without meaning is useless" - WRONG! There are a lot of functional grammatical terms that don't have meanings as such, but have uses, such as "as", "a", "to", "of" etc...

Seriously? Of course those have meanings; and have meanings which are commonly understood, with specific definitions. Are you not a native English speaker?

 

[Meed]

Seriously? Of course those have meanings; and have meanings which are commonly understood, with specific definitions. Are you not a native English speaker?

Some words are very difficult to truly capture with definitions. Wittgenstein's example of "game", quoted above, is a good example.

Another example that comes to mind is "bald". Someone with a single hair on their head would be deemed bald. Someone with 2 hairs on their head would be deemed bald. Someone with ... with X - 1 hairs on their head would be deemed bald. Someone with X hairs on their head would not be deemed bald. Solve for X.

 

[hgc]

I just want to point out that this thread, which used to be about Jackson Pollock, is now 100% word games, like so many other threads gone by. Not complaining, but just pointing it out.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I just want to point out that this thread, which used to be about Jackson Pollock, is now 100% word games, like so many other threads gone by. Not complaining, but just pointing it out.

Another load of Pollocks.