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Originally Posted by Claudius  I still think art is in the eye of the beholder! Not in ivory towers. |
Commenting on your above statement could potentially lead to very long discussion about the definition and universality of art, and it would probably also lead into aestethics and even epistemology. I don't wish that dicussion, but I still must say that I don't understand your statement.
The first part, "art is in the eye of the beholder" sounds like a version of dadaism (I've always loved Marchel Duchamp) or, a version of the typical relativist postmodernist attitude which makes all words and concepts meaningless since nothing can be defined at all. Simply put, if everything is art, nothing is art. If you have no critera, everything qualifies just because one person thinks so. Is that what you mean?
The second part, I don't understand either. English it not my native language, but I understand "Ivory tower" to denote something esotheric, elitist and exclusive.
So if I understand you right, you are saying "everything is art if somebody thinks so, art is not elitist". This statement however, is a false dichotomy putting up two things as if they were oppsites. If art is "in the eye of the beholder" it gets extremely exclusive since you may then have art that only one person in the universe understands as art. Furthermore, if everything is art depending on personal taste and opinion, that is not opposite to art being exclusive or elitist. I can't connect the two, to me it's like you are saying "everything in the world can be black, so while is elitist".
I think art, like all other words and concepts, should have a defined meaning, otherwise language is meaningless and useless for any sort of communication between people.
As for my definiton of art, I go roughly with the intentionally organised sensory stimuli created by humans with the intention of expressing something. The quality of art should be judged according to a set of variables, among the the skill demanded to produce the piece, the degree of novelty, the degree of impact on the field of art and influence in other areas ie politics, society, development etc, whether it is genre creating or genre defining etc, etc.
Planescape is a good game, but it's not art IMO. I don't see any principle reason why computer games couldn't be art, but Planescape would be bad art in that case
It's very nice to be a computer game, but it's not in even in the same dimension as King Lear, David, Guernica or Shostakovitch's 10th symphony.