"Art is the signature of a civilization"

Kate Raudenbush "Art is the signature of a civilization." --Beverly Sills
February 10 at 11:02am · Comment · Like
MrSpaceman LaVigne, Michelle LaVigne and 5 others like this.

Rich Cleland Spelled in the letters of its culture.
February 10 at 11:30am ·

Kate Raudenbush ...or song, or dance, or painting, or sculpture, or theatre, or architecture,
February 10 at 11:35am

Rich Cleland all culture.
February 10 at 11:36am ·

Zoë Knight Culture is an art form.
February 10 at 12:18pm

Rich Cleland I think culture is the medium out of which art is comprised. Which is not to suggest that art is limited to composition from a single culture. An artist draws from a tool set of cultural symbols (including cultural attitudes and memes) and applies her technique (or technical skills or techne) to create a new expression.

The aesthetic quality of the resultant artifact may be appreciated for skill in construction, cultural aptness, or both. In this case, I'm not using "aesthetic" to mean a sense of what has beauty, rather to say what has resonance.

This resonance is the manifestation of the artifact's translation into the cultural library of the viewer. For example, a work of art may provoke unequal resonance among an audience. I think, this disparity arises out of the capacities and dispositions of those individual libraries. Some people get Kabuki, others love Noise Pop. One person is disgusted as the sacred is made profane; which may be what another person appreciates most about it.

However, regardless of whether or not its intent is misconstrued, all art is ultimately communication (though, as is evident here, not all communication is ultimately artful:). An artist assembles a message by choosing words, colors or harmonic registers, etc. which necessarily reside (or resonate) in her own cultural library.

It is possible that, through the synthesis of these aspects, some artifacts are so profound that they open the way to infectious, new cultural avenues with definitions of their own, but even the most iconoclastic owes something to the cultural antecedents it seeks to flout.

Therefore, I may agree that culture is an art form, but, in that case, I would then be reluctant to agree that there were any other forms.
February 10 at 2:21pm ·

Rich Cleland By way of explicating my position further, let me say that it is my personal belief that the basic, underlying message most artists seek to convey through their work is, "I'm not alone in this, am I?"
February 10 at 2:25pm ·

Orion Keyser art is so many things, and then there's craft, these things deceptively entertain one another.
February 10 at 3:06pm

Kate Raudenbush Rich, you are quite the elucidator today!
February 10 at 9:14pm

Deborah-Dr Deb- Windham art makes you happy
February 10 at 9:41pm

Rich Cleland I blame it on this Neal Stephenson book i'm reading. He has a tendency to activate my head and get me chatty.

I agree with you Dr. Deb, and sometimes it makes me sad, which makes me happy, too.
February 10 at 9:49pm