07/11/2017 Classificatory disputes about art - Wikipedia

Classificatory disputes about art

Art historians and philosophers of art have long had classificatory
disputes about art regarding whether a particular cultural form or piece
of work should be classified as art. Disputes about what does and does not
count as art continue to occur today.[1]

Contents
1 Definitions of art Claude Monet, Impression, soleil
2 Theories of art classification levant (Impression, Sunrise), 1872,
3 Disputes about classifying art oil on canvas, Musee Marmottan
3.1 Conceptual art
3.1.1 Recent examples of disputed conceptual art
3.1.2 Controversy in the UK
3.2 Computer and video games
4 See also
5 Notes and references
6 Further reading

Definitions of art
Defining art can be difficult. Aestheticians and art philosophers often engage in disputes about how to define art. By its
original and broadest definition, art (from the Latin ars, meaning "skill" or "craft") is the product or process of the
effective application of a body of knowledge, most often using a set of skills; this meaning is preserved in such phrases
as "liberal arts" and "martial arts". However, in the modern use of the word, which rose to prominence after 1750, art
is commonly understood to be skill used to produce an aesthetic result (Hatcher, 1999).

Britannica Online defines it as "the use of skill or imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or
experiences that can be shared with others".[2] But how best to define the term art today is a subject of much
contention; many books and journal articles have been published arguing over even the basics of what we mean by the
term art (Davies, 1991 and Carroll, 2000). Theodor Adorno claimed in 1969 It is self-evident that nothing
concerning art is self-evident any more. It is not clear who has the right to define art. Artists, philosophers,
anthropologists, and psychologists all use the notion of art in their respective fields, and give it operational definitions
that are not very similar to each other's.

The second, more narrow, more recent sense of the word art is roughly as an abbreviation for creative art or fine
art. Here we mean that skill is being used to express the artists creativity, or to engage the audiences aesthetic
sensibilities. Often, if the skill is being used to create objects with a practical use, rather than paintings or sculpture
with no practical function other than as an artwork, it will be considered it as falling under classifications such as the
decorative arts, applied art and craft rather than fine art. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or
industrial way, it will be considered design instead of art. Some thinkers have argued that the difference between fine
art and applied art has more to do with value judgments made about the art than any clear definitional difference
(Novitz, 1992). The modern distinction does not work well for older periods, such as medieval art, where the most
highly regarded art media at the time were often metalwork, engraved gems, textiles and other "applied arts", and the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classificatory_disputes_about_art#Computer_and_video_games 1/6
07/11/2017 Classificatory disputes about art - Wikipedia

perceived value of artworks often reflected the cost of the materials

and sheer amount of time spent creating the work at least as much as
the creative input of the artist.

Theories of art classification

The traditional Western classifications since the Renaissance have
been variants of the hierarchy of genres based on the degree to which
the work displays the imaginative input of the artist, using artistic
theory that goes back to the ancient world. Such thinking received
something of a boost with the aesthetics of Romanticism. A similar
theoretical framework applied in traditional Chinese art; for example
in both the Western and Far Eastern traditions of landscape painting
(see literati painting), imaginary landscapes were accorded a higher
status than realistic depictions of an actual landscape view - in the
West relegated to "topographical views".

Many have argued that it is a mistake to even try to define art or

beauty, that they have no essence, and so can have no definition.
Often, it is said that art is a cluster of related concepts rather than a
single concept. Examples of this approach include Morris Weitz and
Dong Qichang, Landscape 1597. Dong
Berys Gaut.
Qichang was a high-ranking Ming civil
servant, painting imaginary landscapes in
Another approach is to say that
the Chinese tradition of literati painting,
art is basically a sociological
with collector's seals and poems.
category, that whatever art schools
and museums, and artists get away
with is considered art regardless of formal definitions. This institutional theory of
art has been championed by George Dickie. Most people did not consider a store-
bought urinal or a sculptural depiction of a Brillo Box to be art until Marcel
Duchamp and Andy Warhol (respectively) placed them in the context of art (i.e., the
art gallery), which then provided the association of these objects with the values
that define art.

Proceduralists often suggest that it is the process by which a work of art is created
or viewed that makes it, art, not any inherent feature of an object, or how well
Andy Warhol exhibited
received it is by the institutions of the art world after its introduction to society at wooden sculptures of Brillo
large. For John Dewey, for instance, if the writer intended a piece to be a poem, it is Boxes as art.
one whether other poets acknowledge it or not. Whereas if exactly the same set of
words was written by a journalist, intending them as shorthand notes to help him
write a longer article later, these would not be a poem.

Leo Tolstoy, on the other hand, claims that what makes something art or not is how it is experienced by its audience,
not by the intention of its creator. Functionalists, like Monroe Beardsley argue that whether a piece counts as art
depends on what function it plays in a particular context. For instance, the same Greek vase may play a non-artistic
function in one context (carrying wine), and an artistic function in another context (helping us to appreciate the
beauty of the human figure).

Disputes about classifying art

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classificatory_disputes_about_art#Computer_and_video_games 2/6
07/11/2017 Classificatory disputes about art - Wikipedia

Philosopher David Novitz has argued that disagreements about the definition of art are rarely the heart of the
problem, rather that the passionate concerns and interests that humans vest in their social life are so much a part of
all classificatory disputes about art (Novitz, 1996). According to Novitz, classificatory disputes are more often
disputes about our values and where we are trying to go with our society than they are about theory proper. For
example, when the Daily Mail criticized Damien Hirst and Tracey Emins work by arguing "For 1,000 years art has
been one of our great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all" they
are not advancing a definition or theory about art, but questioning the value of Hirsts and Emins work.

On the other hand, Thierry de Duve[3] argues that disputes about the definition of art are a necessary consequence of
Marcel Duchamp's presentation of a readymade as a work of art. In his 1996 book Kant After Duchamp he
reinterprets Kant's Critique of Judgement exchanging the phrase "this is beautiful" with "this is art", using Kantian
aesthetics to address post-Duchampian art.

Conceptual art
The work of the French artist Marcel Duchamp from the 1910s and 1920s paved the way for the conceptualists,
providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works (the readymades, for instance) that defied previous
categorisations. Conceptual art emerged as a movement during the 1960s. The first wave of the "conceptual art"
movement extended from approximately 1967 to 1978. Early "concept" artists like Henry Flynt, Robert Morris and Ray
Johnson influenced the later, widely accepted movement of conceptual artists like Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, and
Douglas Huebler.

More recently, the Young British Artists (YBAs), led by Damien Hirst, came to prominence in the 1990s and their
work is seen as conceptual, even though it relies very heavily on the art object to make its impact. The term is used in
relation to them on the basis that the object is not the artwork, or is often a found object, which has not needed artistic
skill in its production. Tracey Emin is seen as a leading YBA and a conceptual artist, even though she has denied that
she is and has emphasised personal emotional expression.

Recent examples of disputed conceptual art

1991: Charles Saatchi funds Damien Hirst and the next year in the Saatchi Gallery exhibits his The Physical
Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark in formaldehyde in a vitrine.

1993: Vanessa Beecroft holds her first performance in Milan, Italy, using young girls to act as a second audience to the
display of her diary of food.

1999: Tracey Emin is nominated for the Turner Prize. Part of her exhibit is My Bed, her dishevelled bed, surrounded
by detritus such as condoms, blood-stained knickers, bottles and her bedroom slippers.

2001: Martin Creed wins the Turner Prize for The Lights Going On and Off, an empty room where the lights go on and
off.[4]

2002: Miltos Manetas confronts the Whitney Biennial with his Whitneybiennial.com.[5]

2005: Simon Starling wins the Turner Prize for Shedboatshed, a wooden shed which he had turned into a boat, floated
down the Rhine and turned back into a shed again.[6]

Controversy in the UK
The Stuckist group of artists, founded in 1999, proclaimed themselves "pro-contemporary figurative painting with
ideas and anti-conceptual art, mainly because of its lack of concepts." They also called it pretentious, "unremarkable
and boring" and on July 25, 2002, in a demonstration, deposited a coffin outside the White Cube gallery, marked "The

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classificatory_disputes_about_art#Computer_and_video_games 3/6
07/11/2017 Classificatory disputes about art - Wikipedia

Death of Conceptual Art".[7][8] In 2003, the Stuckism International Gallery

exhibited a preserved shark under the title A Dead Shark Isn't Art, clearly
referencing the Damien Hirst work (see disputes above).[9]

In a BBC2 Newsnight programme on 19 October 1999 hosted by Jeremy

Paxman with Charles Thomson attacking that year's Turner Prize and artist
Brad Lochore defending it, Thomson was displaying Stuckist paintings,
while Lochore had brought along a plastic detergent bottle on a cardboard
plinth. At one stage Lochore states, "if people say it's art, it's art". Paxman
asks, "So you can say anything is art?" and Lochore replies, "You could say
A Dead Shark Isn't Art, Stuckism
everything is art..." At this point Thomson, off-screen, can be heard to say,
International Gallery, 2003
"Is my shoe art?" while at the same time his shoe appears in front of
Lochore, who observes, "If you say it is. I have to judge it on those terms."
Thomson's response is, "I've never heard anything so ludicrous in my life before."[10]

In 2002, Ivan Massow, the Chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts branded conceptual art "pretentious, self-
indulgent, craftless tat" and in "danger of disappearing up its own arse ... led by cultural tsars such as the Tate's Sir
Nicholas Serota".[11] Massow was consequently forced to resign. At the end of the year, the Culture Minister, Kim
Howells, an art school graduate, denounced the Turner Prize as "cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit".[12]

In October 2004, the Saatchi Gallery told the media that "painting continues to be the most relevant and vital way that
artists choose to communicate."[13] Following this, Charles Saatchi began to sell prominent works from his YBA
(Young British Artists) collection.

Computer and video games

Computer games date back as far as 1947, although they did not reach much of an audience until the 1970s. It would
be difficult and odd to deny that computer and video games include many kinds of art (bearing in mind, of course, that
the concept "art" itself is, as indicated, open to a variety of definitions). The graphics of a video game constitute digital
art, graphic art, and probably video art; the original soundtrack of a video game clearly constitutes music. However it
is a point of debate whether the video game as a whole should be considered a piece of art of some kind, perhaps a
form of interactive art.

Film critic Roger Ebert, for example, has gone on record claiming that video games are not art, and for structural
reasons will always be inferior to cinema, but then, he admits his lack of knowledge in the area when he affirmed that
he "will never play a game when there is a good book to be read or a good movie to be watched.".[14] Video game
designer Hideo Kojima has argued that playing a videogame is not art, but games do have artistic style and incorporate
art.[15][16][17] Video game designer Chris Crawford argues that video games are art.[18] Esquire columnist Chuck
Klosterman also argues that video games are art.[19] Tadhg Kelly argues that play itself is not art and that fun is a
constant required for all games [20] so the art in games is the art of location and place rather than interaction.[21]

See also
Anti-art and Anti-anti-art
Art criticism
Art history
Beauty
Contemporary art
Definition of music
Degenerate art
Formalism (art)
Ideasthesia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classificatory_disputes_about_art#Computer_and_video_games 4/6
07/11/2017 Classificatory disputes about art - Wikipedia

Notes and references

1. Semiotics of the Media By Winfried Nth [1] (https://books.google.com/books?id=2Zk_Meiva7MC&pg=PA621&lpg
=PA621&dq=%22fine+art%22+%22art+objects%22+semiotics&source=web&ots=Syp47RdWZg&sig=D-Tio3vfK-
UkLs2s2DJzHHGCoDk&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result)
2. Britannica Online
3. Thierry de Duve, Kant After Duchamp. 1996
4. BBC Online (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/1698032.stm)
5. Mirapaul, Matthew (4 March 2002). "ARTS ONLINE; If You Can't Join 'Em, You Can Always Tweak 'Em" (https://q
uery.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CEFDB1F31F937A35750C0A9649C8B63). The New York Times.
6. The Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1905555,00.html)
7. Cripps, Charlotte. "Visual arts: Saying knickers to Sir Nicholas (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_200
40907/ai_n12797891), The Independent, 7 September 2004. Retrieved from findarticles.com, 7 April 2008.
8. "White Cube demo 2002" (http://www.stuckism.com/Tate/WhiteCube.html) stuckism.com. Retrieved 25 May 2008.
9. Alberge, Dalya. "Traditionalists mark shark attack on Hirst" (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article11288
24.ece), The Times, 10 April 2003. Retrieved 6 February 2008.
10. Milner, Frank, ed. The Stuckists Punk Victorian, pp.32-48, National Museums Liverpool 2004, ISBN 1-902700-27-
9.
11. The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/uk_news/story/0,3604,634797,00.html)
12. The Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3585205/The-entries-are-tat.-Theyre-made-badly.-
Theyre-just-very-boring-and-very-thin.html)
13. Reynolds, Nigel 2004 "Saatchi's latest shock for the art world is painting" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne
ws/1473165/Saatchi%27s-latest-shock-for-the-art-world-is---painting.html) The Daily Telegraph 10 February 2004.
Accessed April 15, 2006
14. "Why did the chicken cross the genders?" (https://web.archive.org/web/20100619125645/http://rogerebert.suntim
es.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=answerman&date=20051127). Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the
original (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=ANSWERMAN&date=20051127) on
2010-06-19.
15. "Official PlayStation Magazine (US)". Feb 2006. 2006.
16. "Archived copy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20121017050011/http://kotaku.com/150043/kojima-says-games-are-
not-art). Archived from the original (http://kotaku.com/150043/kojima-says-games-are-not-art) on 2012-10-17.
Retrieved 2011-08-01.
17. A videogame is not art! (https://archive.is/20120723020624/http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=6350406)
18. Chris Crawford, The Art of Computer Game Design 1982 mirrored with permission at [2] (http://www.vancouver.w
su.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html)
19. Chuck Klosterman The Lester Bangs of Video Games Esquire July 2006 at [3] (http://www.esquire.com/news-po
litics/news/a797/esq0706kloster-66/)
20. Tadhg Kelly, Fun: Simple to Explain, Hard to Accept, 2011, at (http://whatgamesare.com/2011/09/fun-simple-to-ex
plain-hard-to-accept.html)
21. Tadhg Kelly, Living Galleries, 2011 at (http://whatgamesare.com/2011/11/living-galleries-games-are-art.html)

Further reading
Noel Carroll, Theories of Art Today. 2000
Thierry de Duve, Kant After Duchamp. 1996
Evelyn Hatcher, ed. Art as Culture: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Art. 1999
David Novitz, Disputes about Art Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54:2, Spring 1996
Nina Felshin, ed. But is it Art? 1995
David Novitz, The Boundaries of Art. 1992
Stephen Davies, Definitions of Art. 1991
Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classificatory_disputes_about_art#Computer_and_video_games 5/6
07/11/2017 Classificatory disputes about art - Wikipedia

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Classificatory_disputes_about_art&oldid=783675923"

This page was last edited on 3 June 2017, at 22:47.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using
this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classificatory_disputes_about_art#Computer_and_video_games 6/6