A couple of days ago I engaged in conversation with a friend, on the topic of art, and he brought up the perhaps very pretentious issue of what defines art.
To boil it down: According to him, the (what should I call it?) central theme or issue of the piece of art - whether it is painting, music, literature, or whatever - has to be expressed through some aesthetic means, lest it is merely art theory.
For example, Franz Kafka expressed his dissatisfaction with, among other things, the beaurocratic juridical system in his novel Der Process. Here, the novel, the story, is the aesthetical "wrap" for the theme or issue. Thus, it is art.
In our discussion my friend used the case of Swedish artist Anna Odell, who faked a psychosis and suicide attempt, as something that he did not regard as art. She documented the scene and following events on video and made them the central piece in an exhibition about the treatment of mental disorder. Therefore, had Kafka written a letter to some concerned official expressing the same issue as in his book, filmed it, and showed it in an exhibition, or something similar, it would not be art, since it has no aesthetic "wrap". The same thing goes for John Cage's piece 4′33″.
On another note, he also thinks that art should evoke emotion - a rather direct emotion. For example, this Mondrian painting is a bad example of art (if art at all) since it requires the beholder to be oriented in, for example, the field of colour theory to be able to understand the painting (what relation the red field has to the blue one in both colour and position) and thus enjoy it.
I guess that I can use the classic da Vinci painting La Gioconda (the Mona Lisa) as an example of the opposite. Her mysterious smile has intrigued millions of people ever since it was created.
I find this very hard to express, but I hope you do get the point. I am not trying to start a "What is art?" discussion, but get a discussion going around these two topics. Please note that these are not my opinions, but his, and so I cannot answer for him. I know there probably are flaws in the examples used, but please let us keep this discussion on a more general level rather than discussion whether or not for example 4′33″ is art or not.
To boil it down: According to him, the (what should I call it?) central theme or issue of the piece of art - whether it is painting, music, literature, or whatever - has to be expressed through some aesthetic means, lest it is merely art theory.
For example, Franz Kafka expressed his dissatisfaction with, among other things, the beaurocratic juridical system in his novel Der Process. Here, the novel, the story, is the aesthetical "wrap" for the theme or issue. Thus, it is art.
In our discussion my friend used the case of Swedish artist Anna Odell, who faked a psychosis and suicide attempt, as something that he did not regard as art. She documented the scene and following events on video and made them the central piece in an exhibition about the treatment of mental disorder. Therefore, had Kafka written a letter to some concerned official expressing the same issue as in his book, filmed it, and showed it in an exhibition, or something similar, it would not be art, since it has no aesthetic "wrap". The same thing goes for John Cage's piece 4′33″.
On another note, he also thinks that art should evoke emotion - a rather direct emotion. For example, this Mondrian painting is a bad example of art (if art at all) since it requires the beholder to be oriented in, for example, the field of colour theory to be able to understand the painting (what relation the red field has to the blue one in both colour and position) and thus enjoy it.
I guess that I can use the classic da Vinci painting La Gioconda (the Mona Lisa) as an example of the opposite. Her mysterious smile has intrigued millions of people ever since it was created.
I find this very hard to express, but I hope you do get the point. I am not trying to start a "What is art?" discussion, but get a discussion going around these two topics. Please note that these are not my opinions, but his, and so I cannot answer for him. I know there probably are flaws in the examples used, but please let us keep this discussion on a more general level rather than discussion whether or not for example 4′33″ is art or not.
Comment