Introduction
Many people look and a modern sculpture and mutter "That sure
ain't art." But at least they have a reasonable idea of what
is and is not art, at least as far as they are concerned. But take
them into an archeological museum and show them a small carved stone,
and ask them if it is art or not. They would probably hesitate and
finally make a decision on the basis of some feeling about the piece,
or a principle learned years ago in school which might be applicable
to the question. This is a problem for most people when viewing
prehistoric art?
Another problem
is how to speak about time periods that are immense, beyond our
normal conceptions of time. We have a good grasp of a century, and
some feel for a millennium. It has been two millennia since Christ.
Two millennia is 20 centuries. When one talks about the history
of man or when man started to create art, the numbers in years get
too big to be comprehensible. This museum uses the convention of
expressing things that happed before Christ in number of centuries
before Christ. So 40c, is 4,000 BC. That is, 40c is about 6,000
years ago.
What is art?
Art is symbolic communication practiced by humans. But this definition
is too broad since that would include all language. And intuitively
one senses that not all language is art. But if we want to talk
about art, especially primitive art, we need to defined it somehow.
So let's assume that in addition to being symbolic communication,
to be art must provide communication beyond the ordinary level of
discourse and use. This means that a laundry list, or accounting
records are not art. But a novel or a wall painting probably is.
The visual arts then excludes music (an auditory art), novels (a
literary art), and dancing (a performance art).
This definition
excludes the purely decorative, that is art must attempt to communicate
something beyond itself. Thus the decorative arts and furniture
may be art, but they may also be just an artifact. Artifacts are
objects or images made by man; that is, they are non-natural objects.
A jar or a sculpture is an artifact; a mountain or a stone is a
natural object. Historically speaking all art that has come down
to us is an artifact, but only some artifacts are art.
Communication
is something that requires a source and destination. A coffin from
ancient Egypt may be a work of art if one feels that the decorations
were made by the artist (the source) to communicate something to
the owner (before death) or to his relatives or other living people
(after death). But likewise one can also view it from the owner's
perspective and say the decorations were a communication from him
to the gods. The artist in that case is just an intermediary craftsman
carrying out the wishes of the owner. Then in all these cases, the
artifact that is the coffin would be art, otherwise it is just an
artifact of the civilization... rare, maybe even unique, but not
a work of art. Decorated plates and pots for example are often artifacts
and not art.
|