>Joanna, as I said in my response to Chuck, too much ground is being
>covered here for me to try to respond to the whole, so I'm nibbling as
>it were here and ther. First one general statement. I don't think that
>"work of art" and "artist as maker" are compatible. You have to choose
>one or the other. Artist as maker (which, as Tom Stoppord points out in
>the text you quote, can apply as well to a cook as to a maker of tragic
>dramas or a carver of columns) emphasizes the skill with which the
>object is made, and says nothing as to the use (including as object of
>contemplation) of the object made. The criterion (and there is only one,
>though exceedingly complex) for art in this sense is decorum.
The point I'm trying to make is that the art in any work of art is not something any concept can encompass, and therefore works that call themselves art but which have nothing but a concept to recommend them are not art, in my book. I'm not quite sure what your point is.
>But "work of art," not really a concept until the 19th century, isolates
>the object, separates it from ongoing human practice, subordinates
>"making" to the thing made. Thus implicit in that concept is exactly the
>art which Stoppard condemns. He writes:
>
>"Well, it is coherent. From the repudiation of the traditional idea of
>value, sprung on us by Duchamp's urinal 84 years ago, we have come to
>put
>a value on repudiation."
I believe what he's pointing out here is that the repudiation has become the work of art. He objects, and so do I. If the work of art carries repudiation in it, fine, but to substitute the idea of repudiation for the work, to say that the idea is the work, is to misunderstand the process of making art.
>This brings out the incoherence in appealing both to "art" and to "work
>of art." What Duchamp did was merely to complete the replacement of art
>with "work of art" romanticism had initiated. It would be empty to speak
>of the "value of art," or at least I doubt that it would have made much
>sense to Horace, Shakespeare, or Pope, but the "value of the/a work of
>art" can become the focus of endless profundity ("the profund" or art of
>sinking Pope called it). In the spring of 1959 some of us at the
>University of Michigan pulled off a hoax called an "evening with the
>Beats." It climaxed with a parody of a very bad 19th century verse drama
>based on the story of Paolo and Francesca -- at the end of which the
>lights went out and all the perpetrators slunk away. The next day an
>undergraduate described it thusly to her professor (who had been privy
>to the stunt): They gave us the work of art and then, nothing, we were
>just left alone with it. (This is inaccurate but gets roughly her
>point.) There is a pretty direct line from the 1805 Prelude to a rotting
>animal head in a jar -- which is not necessarily to object to either.
I don't see myself or Stoppard "appealing to" either art or a work of art; I see no problem in speaking of both in the same breath. It makes no difference to me when it was that folks started speaking of works of art. The Greeks painting pots in the 6th century BC signed their names to them, and sometimes even added comments like, "Nicias couldn't have done as well" -- so they were certainly proud of their art, and of its application, call the work what you will.
>Incidentally, both in Dante and Eliot, "better craftsman" makes better
>sense than "best
>craftsman." Why do you opt for the latter?
Sorry, I'm afraid that was somewhat bloody-minded. I was skewing the phrase in favour of an atypical reading. "Migliore" means either "better" or "best". "E migliore" means "He's better". "E il migliore" means "He's the best". "E il miglior fabbro" it can mean either "He's the better craftsman" or "He's the best craftsman". Though everyone translates the Dante/Eliot "il miglior fabbro" with the comparative, the reader of Italian always hears the superlative meaning as well. Not important.
cheers, Joanna
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