Art and Philosophy
Our ancestors first sought to understand themselves and their surroundings through the invention of myths and the worshipping of gods. The Greeks, for example, created gods like Athena and Aries to explain the concept of wisdom and war respectively. I would like to think, contrary to common thought, that this is not a matter of ignorance but of an answering of a basic primal need in humans that still exists today - the need for symbolism, for the human mind is weak and needs constantly to be reminded of what they value most - ideals and emotions. That is what set the stage for art, whose purpose lies in exploring what man thought and felt. But the limitless capabilities of man, like a fast spreading disease, is so shocking that the boundless expansion of art is quickly making it necessary for man to attempt to define it in order to gain control of, and understand it. Already, the history of art in the 19th century alone has seen movements like realism and impressionism that challenges, time and again, what can be perceived as the notion of art. The underlying concern is that very soon art will not exist, because art is like a garden; though the flowers have to be allowed to bloom freely, a lack of attention and tending afte
Why did he purchase a ready made item and then simply sign "R. Guernica, 1936 is one of his masterpieces where political intent is brought to fruition through Picasso's effort. By that, he meant that people have been so overzealous about recognising the more important and abstract meaning of a word that they gradually fail to comprehend its original meaning. Artists like David, Inges and Courbet could spend hours sitting in front of his motif so that they would be able to express the emotions of the artwork with great accuracy. Lewis then ends with the warning that "Man do not long continue to think what they have forgotten to say. Perhaps Vautier, in saying he is art, is experimenting with the idea of an exclusion of medium so that we would never come across a case of (no allusion directed towards Duchamp,) empty medium passing off as art. Personally, Fountain by Duchamp presents itself to me like the result of a reckless and whimsical artist who has passed his confusion to others, thereby making it not an art but solely a medium without an essence of its own. At present, I choose to define art as anything that, whether it is intent of the artist or not, is understood, in one way or another. The slant towards empiricism is clear, but makes sense provided we ignore the accompanying conundrum about the ability to perceive the unperceivable because then it would be like two parallel mirrors where the images are never ending reflections of each other. This unease arises because these cases, in questioning the definition of art, blatantly challenge the age old convention of pairing recognition with hard work. By the same reasoning, without his placard, Vautier is only art to himself, because to every other unknowing passer-by on the street in Nice, he would just and only be, literally a man sitting in the middle of the street. Likewise, later figures like Picasso, at the other end of the continuum, took great pains to construct the composition of a piece of artwork in such a manner that the message to be conveyed percolates to the viewer successfully. r would most certainly result in a tangled mess of overgrown weeds and undergrowth.
Common topics in this essay:
Athena Aries,
Death Words,
Marcel Duchamp,
Ben Vautier,
Fountain Duchamp,
Inges Courbet,
Undoubtedly Vautier's,
Rene Descartes,
,
Mona Lisa1,
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definition art,
vautier trying,
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Acceptance Essays
