Hoy en día el arte tiene algo de gratuito, parece que hacemos arte porque sí, sin más. No obstante el significado y la función del arte ha variado a lo largo de la historia. La palabra arte procede del latín, ars, que, a su vez, traduce el vocablo griego téchne. Para los griegos, romanos y luego durante la Edad Media, téchne era una habilidad, la capacidad de construir algo, ya fuera una casa, estatua... De hecho, hoy día vemos este antiguo significado en la palabra artesano que también procede de ars, alguien capaz de crear con sus propias manos. En concreto, una escultura o una pintura eran entendidas como representaciones, espejos de la realidad y, en ese sentido, eran distintas de la fabricación de un barco. Sin embargo, en todos los casos existían reglas que debían ser observadas.
Sin embargo, durante el Renacimiento el significado fue cambiando: se dejó de considerar arte el trabajo de los artesanos porque el arte, además, debía crear belleza, rasgo que continuó hasta un pasado reciente. En el s. XX algunos pensadores propusieron una aproximación formal a la idea de arte, según la cual líneas, colores y elementos formales eran considerados fundamentales y otros elementos como la belleza o la representación perdieron importancia. De esta modo la forma gana importancia sobre el contenido abriendo las puertas a la abstracción. Además las vanguardias artísticas, especialmente el dadaísmo y el surrealismo, no creían que la belleza fuese una característica necesaria en el arte. El arte debía transformarse como la misma sociedad burguesa en la que se desarrollaba. Era necesario abrior las puertas a un arte más libre, un tipo de arte capaz de transformar la sociedad, donde los hombres fuesen más libres y capaces de desarrollar su poder creativo.
Pero si el arte ya no tiene por qué representar fielmente a la realidad ni tiene por qué ser bello, ¿qué define al arte?
En torno a los setenta apareció la teoría institucional del arte. Esta teoría sostiene que una obra es considerada obra de arte si así lo estiman las figuras representativas de este medio (críticos, galeristas) y/o ocupa los espacios que la sociedad dedica a este fin tales como los museos.
Lo cierto es que una preocupación constante en la filosofía occidental desde Platón ha sido el problema de las definiciones. La idea que subyace a esta preocupación es que sólo conocemos verdaderamente algo si somos capaces de definirlo. Pero esto nos enfrenta a la paradoja de que en ocasiones nos seamos capaces de definir un concepto y, sin embargo, seamos perfectamente capaces de reconocer cuándo no estamos ante él. Lo cual debe suponer que de algún modo tenemos una cierta idea sobre su significado y lo que designa.
El concepto de arte es uno de estos casos. Incluso no siendo capaces de mencionar todas las características que ha de tener una obra para ser arte y que lo diferencia de otra creación humana, parece que reconocemos cuando estamos ante una..
Ejercicios:
Lee los siguientes textos y contesta:
"Una solución a este enredo la dio Wittgenstein con el concepto de parecido de familia, que explicó en su obra póstuma Investigaciones filosóficas.
One of the
main characteristics that makes the difference between us and the other animals
is that we are cultural beings. We have a biological nature, but we have
created another cultural one. The same happens with the environment. We live
no longer in the natural one. One of fundamental tools to create this space is
our symbolic capability. The symbols, as it happens in the language, allow us
to think about things that are no present, they allow us to think about the
consequences of our actions before we do them, and they enrich reality with new
meanings.
Art is one of these activities
that exists only in the cultural world. No other animal create pieces of art.
Nowadays, art has something of free, but its meaning has changed over
time. The word art comes from the
latin word ars, which, in turn,
translates the greek word téchne. To the Greeks, Romans and, afterwards, during
the Middle Ages, téchne was an ability, the capability to build something such as a
house, a statue, a ship… In particular, a sculpture, a painting was a representation or
mirror image of reality and, of course, it was different to create a ship.
However, in all the cases there were certain rules that had to be observed.
Even today we can see this old meaning of art in the word artisan, someone who is able to create something with his own
hands.
However,
during the Renaissance this meaning changed. The work of artisans was no longer considered
art, because art was linked to beauty. This new idea was continued till the
modern period. A number of 20th-century thinkers
proposed a formalist approach to art in
which lines, colours and other formal qualities were considered as
paramount and other elements, beauty or representational aspects, were
downplayed or excluded. Thus, form was
elevated over content opening the way for the abstractionism. Besides, the artistic avant-gards,
specially Dada and Surrealism, didn’t
think that beauty were a necessary characteristic of art. Art has to be changed
like the bourgeois society had to. It was necessary to create a new art
more free. A kind of art able to transform the society in which men were also
more free and able to develop their creative power.
But if art is no longer a mirror image of
reality, if it doesn’t have to be beautiful, if it doesn’t has to be in a
museum, if many other objects that would have never been in a museum are now in
one. What’s art?
In the 1970s appeared the “institutional
theory” of art. This theory holds that works of art qualify as such by virtue
of having this title given by authorized members of the art world (critics,
those responsible for galleries, artists themselves…)
A perennial theme of Western philosophy since
Plato has been the pursuit of definitions. The tacit idea is that true
knowledge of something depends on being able to define it. But this presents us
with a paradox, for those who cannot provide a definition of a given concept
are generally able to recognize what it isn’t, which surely requires that they
must know, at some level, what it is.
The concept of art present us with such a case.
Even if we are not able to mention all the necessary and sufficient conditions
for something to count as a work of art, we seem to know what it is.
Exercise:
Read the following texts
“One way out to this maze is provided by
Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance, which he explains in his
posthumously published Philosophical
Investigations. Take the word game. We all have a clear idea what games
are: we can give examples, make comparisons between different games, arbitrate
on borderline cases, and so on. But troubles arise when we attempt to dig
deeper and look for some essential meaning or definition that encompasses every
instance. For there is no such common denominator: there are lots of
thingsvthat games have in common, but there is no single feature that they all
share. In short, there is no hidden depth or essential meaning(…)
If we suppose that “art”, like a game, is a
family resemblance word, most of our difficulties evaporate. Works of art have
many things in common with other works of art: they may express an artist’s
inner emotions; they may distil the essence of nature; they may move, frighten
or shock us. But if we cast around for some feature that they all possess, we
will search in vain; any attempt to define art is misconceived and doomed to
fail”
(Ben Dupré 50
Ideas you really need to know)
“They were asking me questions
like “Is it art?” and I was saying “Well, if it isn’t art… What the hell is it
doing in an art gallery and why are people coming to look at it?”
(Tracey Emin)
“No artist desires to prove
anything (…) No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist
is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist
is ever morbid. An artist can express everything.
Thought and
language are to the artist instruments of art.
Vice and
virtue are to the artist materials for an art(…)
All art is
at once surface and symbol.
Those who
go beneath the surface do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that
art really mirrors.
Diversity
of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.
When
critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
We can
forgive a man for making a useful thing as long a he does not admire it. The
only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is
quite useless”
(Oscar
Wilde, The picture of Dorian Gray,
preface)
1. Explain which vision of art is
behind each text
2. Which one do you agree the most?
3. Try to explain your own vision about
art
