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interesting: the art or crap thing simply reinforces the argument that art is what the artists/the galleries/the critics/the academics say it is and nothing else--the boundary art/crap is that of sanctioned vs unsanctioned "art" objects.
i dont think there is another way to distinguish art from anything else.
there is no particular type of experience that could be pointed to in order to distinguish art from nonart---similarly not everything that you might take as beautiful is art---not everything that might provide an experience of the sublime is art (particularly not if you follow the third critique argument closely in defining teh sublime, which is simply an experience like that of seeing something really really big)
take as an example types of music or visuals produced by folk who treat such production as part of a ritual practice---to define such music/objects as "art" is to split them away from their context and to focus attention--often arbitrarily--on the object rather than on what enframes the object (ritual, the systems that feed into ritual, etc.)----the notion of "art" in aesthetic philosophy derives almost entirely from the question of human creation in a christian context--this conception is usually processed through plato, through the figure of the demiurge. human beings discover form---god makes it--therefore human beings do not really create anything--they discover what is already extant. visit any african "art" museyroom and you'll get a good idea of how this ideology entwined with imperialism to arbitrarily redefine objects, to enact the superimposition of xtianity on other peoples.
more generally, if you focus on objects you cant even account for your own processes of making meaning.
the qualities that inhere in an object do not explain your responses to that object (look at the crap or art quiz from this angle and it demonstrates the argument)
art is a commodity: the erasure of process doubles the erasure of manufacturing in thinking about commodities: control over the definition of art is a mode of exercize of social power.
which is functional in that people like to be told how to react to phenomena.
this is art.
now you know what it is and how to act.
dont talk too loud.
be revenerent.
these Things are Sacred Things.
why?
because we say so.
because the building says so.
damn, these Things must be worth alot of money.
price=value.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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