Art as a Cultural System

Reading “Art as a Cultural System” was exciting, informative, and easy to understand. This is what someone else would say… Not me. I found Clifford Geertz’s article as pretentious as it was boring. Removing the aesthetic nature of art is a conversation worth having, but not a topic worth investigation. Whatever time and money was put into making this article, and the events that led to its creation would have been best spent elsewhere. Art is a beautiful, and wondrous thing. I do however agree that social tendencies towards art can tell someone a lot about a culture or society. Art deserves to be talked about, but I like to believe that the pleasures of art are much simpler than what is described in Clifford Geertz’s article.
Great art occurs when skill, and expression meet in order to convey a message, or to express a feeling. It carries a power within itself. To see a piece of original art is to be standing in front of someone’s heart, and to really look at the sweat and blood put into an expression. The feeling you get from seeing and analyzing a piece of art can inspire creativity, and promote a greater plane of thought. To try to understand an artist and to interpret the art as you understand it, is one of the most thought provoking, intellectually stimulating activities you can participate in. To remove the arts aesthetic value as an original is to destroy the purpose of art. It is to say that an original is the same as a copy. That something someone pined over for days is equally amazing to see in a picture someone took of it. To be able to marvel at an original creation and speculate on it’s design is all that I think is important. It’s not what the artist intended it for, it’s you make of it.
Though my feelings concerning the removal of the aesthetics of art still remain the same, Geertz brought up a very good point. If you look past the art, and rather at the artist, and how he treats art, you can tell a lot about the way he thinks, and most likely the way his entire culture treats art as well. People make art for different reasons, but it is how people treat, and discuss their art that indicates where the artist is coming from with his creations. A man who sells his best art at a high price, is a man who makes a living off of art, however on page two of the article in the last paragraph, we see an example of a man who lives for art. Paul Bohannan sells the art that doesn’t turn out well, keeps the ones the do come out well, and gives the exceptional one as gifts. This shows his true desire to be close with his art, but at the same time be wise and generous with it as well. He can get rid of what he doesn’t prefer without just scrapping it, a very smart and compassionate way to manage your art.