> O.K., it has seemed to me that one of the underlying "must have" conditions
> of art is that it is about something. To be art, it has to have
> "aboutness". That's a bit different from what philosophers call an "only
> and every" condition. Nobody (that I'm aware of, at least) would insist
> that only art, and every example of art, has "aboutness". Science has a
> high "aboutness" quotient as well. Do any of W.'s family of usages violate
> "aboutness"?
I think what you're calling "aboutness" is closely related to Husserlian
intentionality, Schutz' relevance theory, and so forth. I would argue that
just about anything that has meaning, has meaning-in-relation-to, and this
is the site or contextualization of aboutness vis-a-vis that anything.
> The second, non-exclusive condition that is central to art is the idea
> of Quality, which is extremely distinct from Preciousness. But these too
> are no exclusive concepts. Something may be precious as all hell, and still
> have awe inspiring quality, and be great art, like some renaissance
> silverwork... we may, in fact, be highly sympathetic to some of the values
> expressed in such a piece, and simultaneously disgusted by other values
> expressed by the same work.
This does ignore the attack on quality during the period of concept-art.
For myself, "quality" carries a problematic of class, if not gender, etc.
I remember Cage saying something about the Balinese saying it may not be
art, but we do the best we can. Forgetting the source and author of the
statement, I can see its validity.
> But, the spectrum of goodness to badness of Quality is one of the
> central keys in coming to terms with the work. What is it about, and how
> well does it work at being about what it is about ? Did you ever see Martin
> Scorcese's movie , The King Of Comedy, with Robert DeNiro and Jerry
> Lewis... it's about making this distinction, and about what happens to the
> mind that loses to capacity to make the distinction. On one level, a very
> sophisticated work, about "aboutness". Aboutness is another way of saying
> Mapping, just from a different linguistic quirk-angle.
Hmmm... Then _everything_ is mapping, which I doubt. I also wonder how
quality becomes allied with, in allegiance with, "good" and "bad" which
otherwise have ethical connotations.
Alan
>
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a forum on spatial articulations, perspectives, and procedures
texts are the property of individual authors
for information, email majordomo@forum.documenta.de with
the following line in the message body: info blast
archive at http://www.documenta.de/english/blasta.htm
or http://www.documenta.de/deutsch/blasta.htm
documenta X Kassel and http://www.documenta.de 1997
-------------------------------------------------------------