Whatever art may have meant as a category
500 years ago, 200 years ago, 50 years ago,
The category became so broadened as to include
Firstly ancient things not made as art, but which strike
One s beautiful perhaps, and were included. There is and
Were tremendous value judgments about this, an old mask
Is called art, but a handgun is not. Unless the handgun is
In a museum (displayed as art and not a relic from the past) or a gallery.
I meself am not making any value judgment here, I am not one of the people
That cry about the death of art blah blah blah.
But the category: art, as a thing with specific qualifications no longer exists.
The second point is that for a long time, hundreds of years, art that was much opposed to what had become universally accepted requirements as what art was and about, was taken
Into the category art. Sometimes this took a bit of time before plenty of writers and such would vouch for the new art. The new was always brought into the old definitions by
Appeal to show the elements in the new art which were part of the old art category, mostly inspiration, spiritual beauty were handy as one can find those qualities were ever
One chooses to find them. There was never attempt to change the category or find a new category for the new creativity.
This is true of the Dadaist artists as well. The famous anti-artists.
They themselves considered their work art and opposed to the
Reality of the world, including art world, but really their biggest
Idea was that they gave themselves up to the feeling of the times,
Disgust for war and the seemingly pointless activity and pretense of much
Society and art, such as spending months painting a correct studio portrait when
Life during wartime was absurd or horrible and called for art of the same. From this idea arose the spontaneous and the deliberately shocking. But like a fit of anger or a summer’s infatuation, dada quickly passed. In any event it is to be seen in its own chapter in the annuals of art history.
One could go through every movement and every piece of art that has shone
In a gallery or museum, there is not much point in that, as a cursory search of
Art the past 50 years will show that anything can be called art. A car radiator inside a car
Is called a radiator, but put it in a gallery and it is also dressed in the term art.
Again I have no value judgment as to the validity of one sort of creativity or placement of a Thing as art. In fact how can one? When it is clear that there is no longer a specific category: Art. The word art rather than suggesting certain qualifications and ideas beyond
What is apparent has come to mean only thus: a thing or non-thing, in a museum or gallery. Something that is called art. A thing that by being named art takes on characteristics in theory that propose it as being more than it is as it self, and prepossess
That these characteristics are inherent in all the things called art.
Mostly art has become a term to suggest something a person finds pleasing, even
If pleasing because it is provocative. And a term of extra special magical powers.
Anything can be called art, but things are given extra status and magical, and marketable qualities by being called art, which things are not said to have of themselves until they are called art. So that is what Art is now, a magic word to designate special ineffable worth! Abracadabra!
