Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> It takes a certain amount of complexity of society before members of
> that society distinguish any particular artifact as a work of art.
> What amount of complexity I am talking about cannot be determined with
> any exactitude or simply from theory. Empirical study is the only
> thing that may tell us anything about such a subject, but
> unfortunately empirical study is mostly lost to us in these matters
> when investigating pre-historic societies. The main point that should
> be made is that it takes a certain amount of division of labor and
> specialization of craft before a person is elevated to the position of
> a recognized good maker/creator of an artifact and then from there to
> a recognition that a good maker of artifacts can be a good artist.
Yes. But before someone can be put in the category of "_good_ artist" there has to be the category of "artist" (as distinct from mere (!) "maker/creator." In Pope's _Essay on Criticism_ "art" is still pretty much a simile for "craftsmanship" or "conscious skill" (techne). I don't believe, in fact, that this conversation/debate could have been held in 1710, when "work of art" would (if intelligible at all) have been more or less a synonym for "artifact," "artifice" (as opposed to "work of nature").
In reference to the art work that began this thread, to argue that it is _not_ a work of art is, in effect, to go way beyond the creationist arguments of the fundamentalists and claim that god created those farts, because that is the either/or: it is either a work of art or a work of god/nature. No third alternative.
Carrol