"Philosophy is trying to label things." So said I today while discussing aesthetics with an Art History major. She'd recently sat through a seminar with a Philosophy professor, and by the end of it she and her friends were rather perplexed by what the prof thought of as important.
In my Phil of Art class we spent three months trying to determine what makes something art, what aesthetics mean. It turns out that actual artists and critics don't give a flying funk, they just want to know if it's GOOD. Well, what do you know? Philosophers don't care. That old saying "I don't know what is art but I know what I like" doesn't apply to us. I don't care if it's GOOD art, apparently, I'm just supposed to care if I can classify it as such.
And luckily, that's pretty much what I do. If something that is not being used for any mundane purpose it put forth to me I judge it. I love dada. Man Ray, Dali...Duchampe. Art isn't necessarily beautiful (although Dali's paintings were certainly aesthetically pleasing). And it isn't necessarily difficult or complex (although Man Ray's photography often surpassed his painting in that area). And sometimes it is a political statement about art itself (thank you, M. Duchampe!). But what art is, to me, is something whose main purpose is to achieve an aesthetic response. Not to follow the rules, not to break them. Not because someone says it is, or to force them to say why it isn't. I think art is in what we breathe...but I think the air molecules might say the same for our lungs...so red and smooth (or black and phlegmy in my case).
My writing isn't art...even my poetry isn't art. Emotions aren't art. Emotional expression isn't art. Emotional evocation is.
My god, I'm a solipsist.
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