This book is a great introduction into how art has changed through the ages from the work of skilled crafts-men of the pre-renaissance, the Renaissance where art was created usually within guilds as artisans, the post renaissance, - into Artists, who create Art, then into Aestheticians and up to the modern day ...
The book starts off with an introduction "what's the big idea?", Which is kind of a fireside discussion or friendly chat about how art has emerged within the Western culture, and the discussion about how there is so much confusion on what the description of art might be. He goes on to talk about the distinction between art and fine art, and if indeed, there is actually any distinction at all? But the essence of this first chapter that I picked up was that the word art, has its roots in Greek, like so many things have its roots in the Western world. The word art is derived from the Greek word meaning technology!… In 1986 the critic Arthur C done to wrote the book "the end of art" within The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, published in New York, by Columbia University press. Within that book he suggested that the idea of art was now at an end. However we now some 30 years on, and it seems to be growing even quicker!
Art as an idea, is all about our own ideas of being human. The word art, is incredibly peculiar for one thing, and the author goes into a very logical and detailed explanation of the interpretation of how the word can be used for the various and mum to multiple manifestations. It's clear to see that art to somebody, is not art to somebody else! The author also discusses some of the fundamental philosophical ideas that perhaps starts with Aristotle (although not directly quoted) and the Cartesian theory of head and body. He talks about self-consciousness and our own awareness in relation to our own individual experiences, as we emerged and evolved as human beings. This links really nicely with some of the research I have been doing around the subject of emotions, affect theory and so on, and in particular our reactions to events coupled with our ability to articulate them. By this I mean our language. So this self-consciousness and language, combined together to try and make sense of the world that we live in seems to be at the root of what art is all about.
In chapters 2&3, Steve Shipps discusses the history of art, not only in visual images, but just as importantly what the word art, has actually meant as we have progressed from viewing artistic images that were almost certainly and exclusively originally within the domain of religion, through to the Renaissance, then a few hundred years later the rise of the industrial revolution, and the access that was made available for all sorts of art to be viewed not justify the middle-class but everybody into the modern day.
The word Art, just actually means to create... Aesthetic, - comes from the Greek word Aesthesis, meaning sense-perception.
An epiphany again for me, whilst reading this book!
So art, is something in a contemporary sense, that gives a viewer sense-perception.... It induces a sense perception; in other words it plays with your perception, ergo, it plays with your mind!!!!
This soooo explains the conflict of contemporary art with the public, when they say "they don't get it"... Well, arguably, by saing exactly that, they are getting "it"! - The "it" of course, is the sense-perception. They might not like "it", but they are certainly getting "it"....
Doh, its taken me soooo long to get it too!
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