Alex’s post was very helpful in increasing my understanding of the theory he has been putting forth which I think has some quite positive qualities. It seems to leave art relatively open as there is no overarching definition and instead art is defined as the whole made up of variant parts. Each part consists of a spectrum of further parts in an effort to break down categories of art into their varying members. So art is somewhat defined as all instances of visual art, writing and music. I believe the largest circle, which is unlabeled is art, but a subcategory is called art. Since he says this category plus music can be combined in such instances as animation I believe he means visual art and is not categorizing art as a part of art. If this is true then writing is probably a sub-genre of visual art. Also could, for example, perfume creation be considered art? If it can then that would have to be a separate sub category of art because it is neither visual nor auditory like music. Spoken poetry would also be a separate category if music is the title of the subgenre because it is auditory, but not music.
The breakdown of music into a color spectrum is interesting and could mean one of two things in my mind. Either each shade of blue, to use his example, is an equally good shade of music and simply differentiates the two or each shade of blue delineates a quality distinction of art. I am inclined to think that he is going in the second direction because he marks two example genres. One is classical and one is electronica. They are marked on almost exactly opposite ends of the spectrum. Since classical is the more respected of the two genres of music I am guessing that the darker end of the spectrum is the music that would be judged better. Also the way the diagram is designed it looks like animation is outside the circle of art which I think, since it a combination of two parts deemed art, is not intentional. I think that animation can exist without music but not without visual art so maybe animation should be a circle drawn almost like a Venn diagram but with no part singularly in music only with the overlap. (I apologize if that is unclear. I do not know how to draw diagrams on the computer.)
If I am confused on any aspects of the theory please feel free to correct me.
Can art be defined as the sum of its parts? If so how do we recognize when something should be considered a part?
Alright,
ReplyDeletebefore I make a post to answer your question, I want to give you the minor adjustments that I need to fill in on the description side of things. For starters, to elaborate on the things that are outside of the the three top categories. The shade of green that I put up as "Animation" was a poorly titled way of trying to say -Art that relies on Music- for an animation without sound would be just art, but adding the music tells part of the story, thus they are perfectly equal in both traits. This example works for the spoken word aspect as well, for it would be a shade of purple somewhere between writing and music (since it incoorporates rhythm and writing). This example is particularly nice though for the spoken word color would be more towards red while "Songwriting" would be the central purple point between red and blue.
As for the Shades of colors, the premise of that thought was that all of the big categories (Blue, Red, Yellow, Green, Purple, etc.) could be broken down into genre's of that category. Thus, in music, the shades would be different styles of music, however in the yellow subcategory the things listed for the shades would be things like: paint, pencil, sculpture etc.
The argument you put that was most fascinating to me though was the comment on scent being part of the chart. Technically I had not been considering this as part of the art forms, but I will have to contemplate on this and get back to you. Either way, how do you feel about this now? did this help at all?