[MD] Defining Art (was Churning Point)

[Platt Holden]

> [Arlo]
> First, your (Santayana's) definition could also easily include smoking peyote.
> What words in that definition do you feel preclude it?

The same words that preclude it from applying to a three martini buzz -- 
beauty, beauty and beauty. 

> Second, of course "art" is a cultural word, usually describing visual (moving or
> stationary) and auditory sensory experience, but at times including culinary and
> kinasthetic-tactile sensory experience as well.

"Art is a high quality endeavor." -- Robert Pirsig, SODV. 

> So, while Yogic mediatation, live burial, peyote and electroshock are also means
> to shatter static patterns, our use of the word "art" excludes these, but its
> exclusion of them is not "natural" but categorizational. That is, as you seem to
> suggest, "art" is a subset of experience which points "out". Some consider
> "dance" art, some consider mime art, some consider yoga art. Some consider
> poetry art. Some consider archery an art. The Sophists used rhetoric, which
> would mean our English Composition courses are actually "art courses". And,
> Pirsig's thesis in ZMM was that building a rotisserie, and maintaining your
> motorcycle, was in effect "art".
> 
> In all these cases, "art" is a metaphorical representation of Quality that
> transcends its representation by pointing the viewer beyond its confined
> pattern to that which can never be confined in patterns. 

Yes, art is indescribable. I suppose you can then say then that anything is 
art. No one can contradict you because art can't be defined. But going on an 
LSD trip that makes you think you're invincible is not what I, or most artists, 
call art.

> "How it points" is a cultural question. "What it points towards" is a universal
> question. "Does it succeed" is all that matters.
> 
> I just end for now with Pirsig's definition, "Art is high-quality endeavor. That
> is all that really needs to be said. Or, if something more high-sounding is
> demanded: Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man." 

Sounds right to me, as does Santayana.

> If you (Platt) can find me one aspect of that definition that can serve to
> support your statement that neither digiderooing nor drumming are "art", please
> do so.

That's not a definition. Art can't be defined and more than Quality can be 
defined. The only valid thing in art is the one thing that cannot be explained. 
But noise isn't art. Next you'll be claiming that primal screaming and farting 
contests are art forms. What in Pirsig's definition precludes them? 

Platt





> 
> Arlo
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