What is art in a literary sense? Have there been authors or writers that have satisfying definitions of art?

to clarify before I get a bunch of pedantic responses: if the work is not representative of "nothingness" in particular replace with "non-coherence" "chaos" "that which is unthinkable/uncommunicable" etc.

the point is a thing is presented to you that refers to not itself

>Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense— he is "collective man"— one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind.
-Jung
This has always been my favorite quote on art. It is as well the favorite art quote of the person whom I have a psychic connection with.

I don't think non-representational art is meant to convey 'nothingness', I actually think it's meant to have pure visual presence. The reason I'm bringing this up tho is that I actually used to think the same thing, that the best general way to describe art is as a mode of communication & representation, but I realized (due to the example of abstract art) that that idea only arises from an interpretative impulse that seeks to process art as information to be deciphered and translated into 'reference' and 'meaning' rather than as visual presence to be experienced as an end in itself.

Attached: wallpaper_van-gogh_animaatjes-36.jpg (1920x1200, 666K)

>It's very difficult, I'd say impossible, to define it.
It's a money laundering scheme.

In the classical era, “art” was seen as a technical vocation. Personally I’ve always found this understanding to be most in agreement with my own. A painting is agreeable if it displays technical ability and daring— occasionally the subject matter is charmingly self aware or erotic or evocative and this provides the same sort of pleasure that a well placed remark in conversation might, but it is secondary to the technical perfection of the work itself.

I’m the modern era, art, or “high art”, or “auction house art”, is inseparably tied to commerce. At best it is a way to launder money for elites (which throws back to the clientelism which birthed so many great works, however our modern elite are far stupider and less discerning than those of the past, being coddled as they are by the leviathan and modern security apparatus); at worst it’s a pyramid scheme of egotism and capitalism— tied generally to a mix of “social conscientiousness” (aka the same old crap, now done by trendy urbanite black people), branding (recently attended an art exhibition where immediately upon walking through the door I was assured that the tee-shirts —containing nothing more than the artists signature and a cartoonish illustration reminiscent of a popular series of children’s books—were “not merely art pieces, but also for sale”), and the self satisfied stupidity of the monied class which genuinely believes that going through the motions of ‘What Bohemianism Looks Like’ is indistinguishable from the real thing.

Because Art does not exist in the object, but the practice. Art simply means skill or craft. When you deconstruct the meaning and objective moral grounding of quality, then the idea of skill and craft are slowly destroyed. To place the Art within the final object, and not in the making of the object, is the ironic result of the dehumanizing effect of humanist philosophy. Traditional modes of painting view it as nothing other than a medium of communication, and the quality of the art rests in the quality of what is communicated and how it is communicated. Contemporary views of painting view it through a relativistic historicity which cares only for the painting as a receiving object of shifting cultural attitudes, like a mould of vague sentimentalities. Questions of skill and quality are irrelevant, because all that matters is that the object was made and where it was received, rather than what it communicates. Of course, it is not that this new art lacks communication, but simply that the quality of the art has nothing to do with what is communicated. This is of course a unavoidable consequence of the commodification of art in a secular society. Art objects can only exist as stores of social value, bought, traded, remembered, and discussed only as means of sub-cultural competition. No in-group or out-group really stands for anything, but the system only works with competition, so false competition must be created. The art that gets rewarded then is that art which is most vague and empty in its communication, so that many groups can adopt it's amorphous visual language as an element of self-identification. It is really nothing more than a confidence game.

cunnilingus
/ˌkʌnJˈlJŋɡəs/
noun
stimulation of the female genitals using the tongue or lips.

>art in a literary sense
The fuck does that even mean? Are you just asking for a definition of art?

>communication of ideas through representations that are not necessarily the ideas themselves
Nice try, but that's what a language is.

Even disregarding the nonsense you wrote in the second part, your dichotomy of classical and modern era thinking is ridiculously simplistic.

>Even disregarding the nonsense you wrote in the second part, your dichotomy of classical and modern era thinking is ridiculously simplistic.
Hit a nerve?

atm I am getting into a more textual understanding of art inspired by Roland Barthes. there exists no quality that makes something art, it is not delineated. you should read the SEP article on Barthes and art

I like the way you phrased this but I see it as cynical and gross, pretty Jamesonian in a way. I ask this genuinely: cold you give an example of contemporary art whose quality is judged to be independent of its ability to communicate? How does one even make that claim? Isn't that merely poor judgement that could be leveled at any 'piece of art'?

You're not actually expecting that guy to have a basis for those sweeping generalizations, right? You're just going to waste your time going down that road of thought.

Kind of. Seeing stupid people acting like they're smart is not pleasant to me.

You've seriously misread what I wrote. I did not say it was judged independently of the ability of the artists to communicate, but rather is judged independently of the quality of what is communicated. Pollack is perhaps the greatest example of this, which is why he has such a prominent place in the cultural consciousness. All his paintings are nothing more than a self-aware expression of the presence of the artist; that is, it is Pollack's act of making the work which is the work. It's seeming originality and its effect on art conversations is what renders it important, even though it is really nothing more than an extreme narcissism. And rather than communicating anything about life or the human experience, he instead ends up providing a rather nihilistic existential angst. It exists without any other purpose but to express its own existence. Certainly, there is a kind of cleverness in it, but there is really no moral system which can allow you to say that it is good. At best, the work is meaningless because existence is meaningless; at worst, the work is evil because it interferes with clear communication of what's beautiful and good.

youtu.be/bHw4MMEnmpc
this just popped up in my recommendations its surprisingly relevant

Scruton is excellent.

essentially this is Alain Botton-tier hedonistic philosophy
>beautyyyy maaan look at this slo-mo flower with a slow aria in the background

maybe watch it before commenting eh ?

Watched the first five minutes some time ago, I'm not interested in listening to his historical fabrications again. (Especially considering that he turned out to enjoy heavy metal, lel)

than why post comments pretending to know what you are talking about ?

Well, Tolstoy (What is Art?) and Wittgenstein (Lectures on aesthetics, psychology, and religious belief) also had something to say about aesthetics. However, Benedetto Croce is the man du jour for the philosophy of aesthetics imo

I know that I'm talking about simplistic bullshit aesthetic philosophy. Am I expected to listen to several hours of such bullshit before I can call it bullshit?

well if you offered any valid criticism i wouldn't mind it, but calling it bullshit is worthless when you offer nothing.

I said how kitschy and hedonistic the aesthetics of the film were and how Scotrum misinterprets history. Frankly I wouldn't know where to start with a more detailed analysis of the fabrications and strawmen he gives at the start. Where the fuck is dulce et utile, where the fuck are naturalism and Poe and Baudelaire and formalism? He seems completely unaware of the complexity of culture and its 19th century developments that resulted in modernism. What Scruton offers isn't an argumentation that deserves a response but a tirade that starts with a premade conclusion. It deserves only to be waved off.

>I said it was a way
>therefore it is that way

Cool

I am 90% sure these bizarre contemporary art pieces that sell for millions at auctions are just money laundering schemes

Schiller has some interesting stuff to say on art. In his On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a series of Letters (1794), he argues that each human is potentially a “beautiful soul” and that the urgent task is to restore the modern fragmented human state to the wholeness that was once its birthright. Schiller equates aesthetics with morality in one sense, arguing that aesthetics make a harmony possible between the opposed halves of the human psyche. Nature pulls towards the sensuous feelings, experienced sensations, impulses and desires. Reason pulls towards morality, logic, sensibility and freedom from desire. Aesthetics formed by enlightened art and taste, allow a rational concept of Beauty to be formed from its two opposite aspects (relaxing and energizing) which can suitably act on the two opposing aspects of human nature, reconciling them into the ideal enlightened human.
Schiller’s philosophy was most concerned with the question of human freedom, though in the end the natural world and art ultimately exist just to serve the advancement and education of humanity. Like Ruskin and Morris after him, Schiller argues that aesthetic experience is distinctive in its freedom from obsessions with purpose and utility, but that freedom is not the simple contemplation of beauty, with no further concerns or implications, but rather a means to develop our imaginative and cognitive capacity in order to gain knowledge of ourselves and others and to imagine new ways of life. Thus the freedom offered by a sensory appreciation of art must be valued for the benefits it can bring to our lives and society. Art is essential, apart from utility, because it creates an aesthetic response which is the foundation of aesthetic education, and hence necessary for the eventual establishment of a ‘society of beautiful souls.’

Modern art is a money laundering scam

Wew lad, that’s a lot to dissect.

Try collecting your thoughts in a condensed manner.

what if i eat some trans girl's dic, is that still cunnilingus?

Basically this. Art is /biz/ but with people who actually make money

As an artist i can say the art world largely depresses me and the end game of art is also very depressing. Most of art is depressing when you're trying to be on the inside of it all. The only thing that can really keep you going is an extreme desire for greatness or money and maybe a love of art on the side.

You can only i think achieve true peace as an artist when you separate yourself from the art world entirely either through success ala Cezanne and disappearing to the countryside while having his art dealer handle sales for him, or isolation ala Van Gogh and dedicate yourself to your craft consciously leaving everything behind.