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Monday 29 November 2010

Some notes on the nature of Art... (1) The Rules of Art

Many practices can be considered normative, but that doesn't mean that they all rely on explicit rules.
A normative activity is normative because it is first a social activity. These systems of conventions are assigned normative powers by cultures/society and there cannot be these 'rules' in art, otherwise they would be repeatable 'facts' (presumably).
Art work as a gesture* of the surrounding culture. Thus, intransitive, for how could I describe all the rules that apply to the work?
Even if we accept that rules must at some level go to form its basis.
Understanding could be considered as training in rules. Art not only a question of feeling. You only like what you understand. Can this always be right? What of absurdist art? The surprise of art. Showing us a new way of seeing something we already understand. Not new origination (potential impossibility) but new invention of use/seeing/synonym.
The artist, the critic, and the spectator share the same 'form of life' (Wittgenstein).
An artist's work isn't explicitly a following of rules.
Knowledge of rules of art available only after in hindsight, before they are only implicit/potential. The paradox of rules.
Rorty. 'We don't interpret art works, we use them.'

* [Gesture theory? No theory at all. Does thinking of art as a gesture help in any way? It shws us that here is something worth looking at. Something of VALUE.]