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.
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4 comments:
Every culture has their own definition of art, and within those cultures, one will find that every individual has their own ideas as well. Trying to decide what is art and what isn't art has always been a huge debate and one that will surely continue. Whether or not one likes to admit it, it's all art. All of it. Yeah, even those white paint on white canvas ones. I am not much of an art expert, but I have learned through a few art classes that we cannot define art because who is an appropriate person or group to decide such things? Duchamp created the controversial "Fountain," an upside-down urinal that stirred controversy – his main reason for creating the work.
There is art I love, and there is art that makes me roll my eyes in complete bafflement, but it is all still art. I've found that a good way to look at art for me is to first view the piece on its own terms and think about my own reactions. Then I like to fall in line with what Geertz recommends by looking past the art and at the artist. You learn their thoughts, their reasons for what they made, and how they express themselves. In some cases, I have found that even in works that I don't like the most, I find myself respecting them just a little bit after learning an artist's motivation and message.
–http://msasr.blogspot.com/
I agree that Clifford Geertz puts too much of an emphasis on analyzing art. As an art student, I know that alot of the time people create art for a variety of different reasons, mostly to convey some sort of emotion. A piece of art can be different to anyone who looks at it, and I don't believe it should be analyzed as much as Geertz is talking about. If an artist didn't intend for their viewer to wonder why exactly there was a yellow brush stroke in one corner, and a red circle in another corner, the meaning of the piece can easily be distorted by trying to analyze it so much. I know that when making a piece of art, if the artist over thinks it too much, the piece becomes too overworked, and can sometimes loose what made it interesting in the first place. I think this is also true with analyzing a piece.
I do however agree, that art shows alot about culture, and about the artist. Different cultures create different types of art. Not that they have boundaries for what they consider art, or beautiful, but different cultures always have an effect on the people that are a part of that culture. Each culture has different values and is easily reflected into people's art work. Sometimes, whether the artist realizes it or not. I also think that if you look at a body of work by an artist, you can look into the artist's mind and start to understand where they are coming from. Even if just from the emotions received from viewing a piece of art, one can begin to understand something about an artist.
I don't think it's fair to say that Geertz places too much emphasis on the analysis of art. Geertz point throughout the article is that one needs to understand the sociocultural context in which the art was created, the impact on and meaning it has to the people who created it, to fully understand the piece. By exclusively sticking to the traditional, western school of art-analysis we will never truly appreciate or understand the piece and it's meaning. However, by learning about, as exemplified by Geertz, the Yoruba-tribe's understanding of the line. The meaning of the imagery and the impact it has on their whole existence we more thoroughly appreciate the art for what it was meant to symbolize, rather then, without this knowledge, more or less discard it as a generic and primitive form of art (which is still a tendency in traditional western art analysis).
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