And I thought writing things in Capital letters would actually make people understand the context of my opinions with regards to the terminology I was using to find a useful definition for art. here is exactly what was written in my ‘fascistic’ analysis:

“THIS IS NOT WRITTEN IN STONE, I AM NOT SUGGESTING THIS TO BE UNIVERSALLY APPLIED BECAUSE THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL USES OF LANGUAGE, THERE ARE MERELY THE HABITUAL USES WITHIN CERTAIN CROWDS THROUGH WHICH WE MAY OBSERVE FAMILIAR MEANINGS. MAN DOES NOT UNCOVER DEFINITIONS, HE INVENTS THEM. What is important is that a definition is useful.”

I make distinctions between ‘nerds’ ‘fanboys’ and ‘snobs’ because there are useful distinctions that arise when trying to talk about something as ‘art’, and the point was that if ‘art’ is to have a useful function then it would best be defined at least loosely on the ‘snob’ barebones ideas because there is a consideration of how a film personally changes the viewer, the threshold has a useful function to describe human experience. Any threshold lower than this can and does exist but it is preoccupied with the product, how it relates to other products, and becomes a rumination on the value of commodities.

Fascism was never about relativity or usefulness, it was about absolutes, it was saying my way or the highway, it is fanaticism. There is nothing fanatical about my opinions on a useful definition for art, I am working within the realm of rational debate, awaiting a rebuttal that finds a more useful definition of the term ‘art’ and that can convince me that another way of looking at the situation is worthwhile.

I would add that the three mentalities I have described need not be fixed to individuals, though there are certainly tendencies for that… its to describe particular frames of reference that someone engages within when evoking the notion of art. I am not saying that someone who is characteristically a fanboy in their behavior cannot have a snobbish experience or articulate his/her experience in that way, I am talking generally of habitual uses, the same way in certain crowds we behave according to some unspoken social understandings, we play the language-game that each situation requires, so can we, any of us play the game of fanboy worship, nerdish categorizing, snobbish introspection, but I would say there are certainly tendencies (habits) to stick to one or the other most of the time.

also I think ‘life dances within it’ is a good description for what I am talking about… its like there is a ‘cinema’ filter where genre archetypes act out their plays, and everything works on a very stylized level, but every once and a while the ‘life’ shines through for me, somewhere beneath it, almost accidentally, ‘dancing’ because it tends to come out of body and facial gestures that flash and are gone. But I am sorry I guess I should keep my description to some socially acceptable lexicon… and I am the fascistic one.

my thoughts on ‘art’ are taken from these threads have been put together into a more coherent post, so if you want to challenge my view feel free to cite it:

http://www.thepaganagenda.com/2008/05/09/demarcating-a-useful-definition-for-art/

You’re convincing yourself that not only are certain people’s emotions and experiences are lower quality than yours. But also that you are capable of divining which people’s experiences are worth while and which are superficial.

And if you’re going to keep going in this direction could you bother to so a better job articulating yourself?
“life seems to dance within it”?!? ugh. Try harder.

And with your attitude you can end up shutting yourself off from any film’s message you don’t personally believe in. Taking your ‘religious’ crack at face value – if I were to not have my ‘let me at it’ attitude, I probably wouldn’t have sat through say, the severely religiously overtoned “Millions”, let alone buy it. Yes, I do apply my ‘let me at it’ stance to religion, it is up to me to decide what is true and false, what is scary fun (reading the book of Mormon intro and laughing, watching Scientology training videos) and what is scary fundamentalist.

Then the Monument Valley “Capital S” Spectacle on top of everything makes the film a strange beast indeed.

But as Goon says: “If it tastes good, sounds good, looks good, let me at it.”

With an attitude like this, I think we should just count ourselves lucky that he isn’t religious! I’m joking.

I would hazard to guess that Kurt, Henrik, Marina, and I have some reverence for this rarer (I call higher) experience, and that someone like Goon sees it as either a delusion of grandeur or not nearly that important to bother with, and being entertained will suffice. To each their own, but at the very least we can admit when talking about ‘art’ we are talking about something different altogether. Goon’s Iron Man is an ‘art’ of an altogether different meaning.

It has to engage at an emotional level
It has to be open to multiple interpretations of meaning (have some depth) – as rot states, “wholly authenticated by the individual’s reaction”

Both of these properties are vague as hell, and for all intents and purposes Ironman and Troll 2 have this effect on people, but then there is good art and bad art. I generally prefer the good stuff, but am not disinclined to take in some of the true trash out there too. I tend to rile against mediocrity, and that ladies and germs is Ironman.

But first, THIS IS NOT WRITTEN IN STONE, I AM NOT SUGGESTING THIS TO BE UNIVERSALLY APPLIED BECAUSE THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL USES OF LANGUAGE, THERE ARE MERELY THE HABITUAL USES WITHIN CERTAIN CROWDS THROUGH WHICH WE MAY OBSERVE FAMILIAR MEANINGS. MAN DOES NOT UNCOVER DEFINITIONS, HE INVENTS THEM. What is important is that a definition is useful.

I have studied some aesthetic theory and I notice a recurring idea in this academic setting where ‘art’ is foremost a very difficult to attain level of excellence. Giorgio Vasari, when articulating what he considered the unparallel greatness of Michelangelo, said he went beyond the bounds of manual skill suggesting there was/is a threshold to valuing something purely on its technical achievements. He used words like ingegno and grazia, but the general idea, and what I think is carried through in an academic reading of ‘art’, is that there is a quality to the “art” work that transcends the sum of its parts in such a way that one cannot point to any ostensive evidence as to why it is so great, it is the experiential event of the patron which alone authenticates this upper echelon of greatness. Hence the very snobby and academic phrase ‘the work has a certain Je ne sais quoi”, meaning the value ceases to be something of a manual nature that can be accounted for. For lack of a better word, we are in the realm of the spiritual (a word which has its own unsavory connotations).

Naturally Goon scoffs at any notion of some spiritual classification to a work, and Colleen sticks to the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I can see why these sorts of conclusions would be drawn, there is a stigma that something which cannot be demonstrably articulated as the reason for a value must be either wishy-washy new age shit, or reduce everything to personal taste in a sort of fatalist inevitability, giving up before anything has been started. Yet we tend to think there is such a thing as mutual love, and whether or not such a thing exists its part of our lexicon, as is art. It may be worthwhile to propose an alternate definition; one that accounts for this familiar usage of the word art and for the endless attempts by people to express what makes ‘art’ special.

Rather then focus on the product to say what art is I think a more useful approach is to focus on a kind of inner activity of the art patron when having an art-experience. Coleen is right, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it is not limited to there, or does not need to be. One can set as a threshold for the meaning of ‘art’ or the art-experience as one of momentary destabilization, or spiritual re-evaluation of some aspect of being when posed with the transcendent artwork. There is the implication that “destabilization” leads to something altogether new in the individual’s self-identity, and I don’t think that is quite right. By destabilizing I do not mean necessarily something progressive, that with each experience one negates the past. It is just as likely the destabilization would lead to a reaffirming of one’s previously held convictions. The art-experience is an indicator to the subtle yet significant distinction between living and merely existing; living incites evaluation into one’s identity. Each person measures this experience according to their own self-awareness, and they feel genuinely a part of the work.

The best analogy I can think of to show the distinction I interpret between something like the formulaic nature of Iron Man with something that provokes a destabilization of the individual, is circuits. As I said earlier, repetition lulls one asleep and the continual repetition of formulaic films has a way of disengaging the viewer from the experience and into a passively observing state; this would be like a closed circuit sat before you operating without your input. When repetition and familiarity are removed enough to interject some intrigue on the part of the viewer opportunities for the academic notion of ‘art’ are afforded; this would be like an open circuit with the viewer embedded in the film experience, and coming out of it changed in some palpable way. There is no universal recipe for opening the circuit, each of us cultivates our own aesthetic sensibilities… BUT I believe it is useful to say that some similar destabilization need occur for something to be considered ‘art’.

So to summarize, the academic notion of “art” has the following characteristics:

1) a rare level of excellence that transcends the purely technical achievements of a work

2) wholly authenticated by the individual’s reaction, not by any property of the work itself

3) requires a palpable momentary or long-lasting destabilization in the individual’s sense of being that induces a direct communion between him/her and the work.

Hardly complete, that is a barebones definition of what I consider the familiar meaning of art if it is to have any sliding scale significance. One can always lower the bar of what constitutes ‘art’ but in doing so one draws attention away from our personal involvement in artworks, and towards the inert things themselves, closed circuits to be admired from afar, rather than open circuits that we feel directly a part of. I think fanboys generally do not give a shit about this kind of participatory idea of art, they want the self-contained ‘art’ you can put behind glass and admire, what I would call the commodity value of a work.

If your subjective definition of art isn’t even going to include that, than I’m done with this conversation. Besides, I don’t even believe you

Will this further fuel the flames of rage for Henrik and Rot?

Will Goon still kick ass for the Lord?

Will Kurt once again prove what a shitty nerd he is by claiming Iron Man is ripping off Verhoeven when in fact the villains armor is based off of a recombination of War Machine (circa 1979) and BattleTech (circa 1984)?

Does anyone care about M Night Shyamalamadingdong?

Will Andrew still like AC/DC even after Kurt admonishes him on the podcast?

Only time will tell.

not that I am going to get into it in this state, but Henrik is right when he says Goon’s definition “devaluates the term, to the point where it has no meaning. If everything is art, then nothing is art, and the term has become useless.” A term in a language game has to at least have a function, or you might as well just grunt incoherently and not even pose the word ‘art’ into your lexicon… and yet Goon you still use the word ‘art’. But I also differ somewhat in how Henrik articulates ‘art’, or as I can grasp of it in this state.

will give my definition tomorrow, but carry on.

As for this little entry in your long line of supposed smoking guns:

- “drawing an elf for a magazine because that’s whats needed has none of that, is not art…”

vs. Henrik a few hours past:

“The job of the artist is to give the people what they need. ” -

Obviously the elf being drawn is not needed by the audience, it’s needed by the publisher because it is WANTED by the audience. I hate to confuse you so, I’ll try and be less complicated.

“So anyways, you’re gonna tell me with a straight face, that if I draw an elf for a magazine, no matter how much care and love and craft I put into it, how much of myself I put into it, its not art because its “opportunistic”.”

I am going to tell you that with a straight face.