In the opening announcement for the online classes I teach, I like to give my students an idea of my slightly unorthodox theory of art. I write each one off the top of my head, so they're always different, and I thought this one was particularly good.
I'd like to take this opportunity to share with you some of my general thoughts on "art." When we hear the word "art," we usually think of traditional media like painting and sculpture, or we think of what is known as "contemporary art" found in museums and galleries. This conception of "art" is actually a relatively recent development in the history of Western culture, dating only to the eighteenth century with the separation of the so-called "fine arts" (painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry) from other human pursuits. This distinction was not made by the artisans themselves but was actually devised by aristocratic writers in England, Germany and France to justify their passive contemplation of these media. The individual pursuits that constituted the fine arts were not set right away. Early lists included not only the five identified above but also landscape architecture and oratory, further attesting to their aristocratic heritage.
It is ironic that the division of the fine arts was established right before the invention in the nineteenth century of photography and the motion picture. Before these epochal inventions, painting (in its numerous formats, but especially oil painting) was the height of technology for representing visual images. And yet, even as photography and film became the dominant media in the twentieth century and have since been elevated to amazing heights with the most recent advances in technology, the traditional categories of the fine arts have prejudiced us against these mediums to the extent that we often don't consider them "art" at all.
As I stated in my Instructor Profile (which you can access through the course menu on the left), I hold the position that all man-made objects are works of art. By this I do not mean to say that all man-made objects are expressions of the artisan's feelings, not exclusively anyway. Another tenet of the modern conception of "art" is that it is primarily concerned with form (as opposed to subject matter) and that through form the observer can read the personal expression of the artisan. The discipline of art history, which only dates to the nineteenth century, placed an emphasis on personal expression almost to the exclusion of subject matter or any other didactic elements of a work of art. This position was perhaps most succinctly summed up by Oscar Wilde when he famously said, "All art is quite useless."
All art, of course, is not useless. Very few people do anything for nothing. And most of the "art" that we encounter has very specific and, yes, didactic purposes. It just depends on how you define "art." The dominant art forms in the visual arts today are television, film, internet content and other new media. And while much of what we watch can be rather frivolous, a lot of it is deadly serious, beginning with cable news channels, which are very popular right now given the current political climate.
It is for these reasons that I'm glad this course uses the term "artifact" rather than "work of art." This reminds us that "art" today encompasses so much more than the traditional "fine arts." As you choose your artifacts for Project One, I strongly encourage you to choose an artifact from contemporary culture that you are intimately familiar with.
I was fortunate to have studied under the great art historian David Summers at the University of Virginia. The vast majority of my thoughts on "art" come from his writings, especially his monumental book Real Spaces. Here is a picture from last year of me with Dr. Summers. I'm wearing a custom-made T-shirt that says "What is ART?" It's the question I ask whenever anybody uses the word "art," because I'm sure they mean traditional and/or "art gallery" art. It's all art.
