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jake williams
13th January 2008, 16:58
Is anyone else interested in these sorts of questions?

What is the economics of artistic activity?
What is art, and the corollary,
What is an artist doing when they "do art"?
What distinguishes between different artistic media (and questions within that - is rap music or poetry, is there a meaningful, significant distinction between prose and poetry, what is operative in "pop music" (image? melody? instrumentation? lyrics?), and how does it relate to art at large, is sex an art and if so is it a special case, is food an art, etc.)?
What moral/political/other ethical responsibilities do artists have?
To their art?
To each other?
To the society at large?
What responsibilities do societies have to artists?
Do artists have a responsibility, aesthetic or otherwise, to be non-conformists, and if so, what social/political/other consequences does this have? What consequences does it have for these questions themselves?
Is beauty an entity? Is it subjective or objective? Does it supersede/exist separately from pleasure?
Are artists harming their art, directly or indirectly, in "using" it, for political causes say, or even for economic causes?Because I really, really am. I don't just think they're fascinating - I think they're critically important. I sincerely think that these are some of the most critical questions we can ask, because I think art is one of the most important parts, sometimes I think the only important part, of human existence.

And I think, maybe more than an economic revolution, we need a total cultural revolution, you know, sexuality, art, intellect, just everything, though I guess I think they're both necessary for each other.

jake williams
15th January 2008, 19:24
I hate to bump this, but I'd kind of like some response on this. Is there a better forum? I wasn't entirely sure, I did place it here though wanting to place emphasis on the fact that I don't consider these things to be trivial, academic issue, but rather critical things about the operating of society.

Anyway, hopefully there's someone interested.

Pawn Power
15th January 2008, 19:35
No. all of those questions are inflated Orphic reveries.

don't waste you time.

jake williams
15th January 2008, 20:00
No. all of those questions are inflated Orphic reveries.

don't waste you time.
Dismissive much? Do you want to elaborate?

Some of the questions, inevitably, will not really be worth the trouble. But I think some inevitably will, for reasons I could go into.

black magick hustla
15th January 2008, 20:19
most of these questions are silly and meaningless because it depends on the context the word "art" is used.

only stupid platonists and dogmatic ideologists (stalinists sponsoring socialism realism) worry about finding "true" art.

Pawn Power
15th January 2008, 20:35
By the way, that was me practicing being a pompous aesthetician.

To elaborate on my dismissal of aesthetics; in general i see the philosophy of art revolving around useless "investigations" of semantic inconsistencies- that is, words like 'art' and 'artist.' More specifically, it is the concentration on self-created "problems" which are circularly unanswerable.

Words and concepts have meaning through there use and linguistic understanding not through the philosophizing of aestheticians.

jake williams
15th January 2008, 22:20
To elaborate on my dismissal of aesthetics; in general i see the philosophy of art revolving around useless "investigations" of semantic inconsistencies- that is, words like 'art' and 'artist.' More specifically, it is the concentration on self-created "problems" which are circularly unanswerable.

Words and concepts have meaning through there use and linguistic understanding not through the philosophizing of aestheticians.
I guess I sort of degree, I mean, in other intellectual arenae I'm something of a fervent and vocal linguistic descriptivist, and perhaps I should restate, or even rethink.

I do think, for one thing, that given the fact that I spend so much bloody time talking to myself about all this, and very little, really almost none at this point talking to anyone else about any of this, I get very dug into not just my own ideas, but my own whole vocabulary, and it can make it troublesome to try to communicate, accustomed as I am to my own presuppositions and initial understandings. I'm also quite attached to what little conversation about any of this I have had with others, just because it sticks out.

Anyway, at first, I'm saying that "art is a thing", or quite probably actually, this is my real working assumption, it's a word used to describe a great number of things. Which of these is "actually" art is, of course, for the aforementioned linguistic reasons, not even a question, but it's entirely possible, in fact I basically think it is the case, that some or one of these is/are particularly meaningful or useful.

And regardless of that sort of value differentiation and judgment, not all of the questions disappear. It's the first necessary task to determine what it is we're talking about, and no one does - in that sense, "what is art" is a purely socio-linguistic question, at least initially - and we proceed from there to try to find things out about it.

If I haven't kept anyone so far then it's not worth keeping going, but if it is then I will.

JazzRemington
15th January 2008, 22:29
Art is a disease.

How's that for an answer?