In the place where analogue and digital overlap, that's why you will find me in the kitchen at parties. Everything is at my site, http://blog.ivanpope.com
They are laughable, yes. But the paintings and murals found in Saddam Hussein's private quarters betray a mind obsessed with sex and violence, argues Jonathan Jones
> Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: NYC Party for Kerry > > Hello all > > Some people that I work with are putting on a John Kerry > fundraising event. It will be a night of political short > films,
> Subject: RE: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Burning Down The House > > Aesthetics is > concerned with value. Suspension of aesthetic value > judgements is a historical wart of Cultural Studies (CS) > expansionism. It is still a value judgement: everything has > equal value, and that value is positive. > So every artwork becomes a masterpiece (maximum possible > value)... disturbingly, the market is happy.
If you look to the market to assign value, obviously not every artwork becomes a masterpiece, or prices would not vary so widely (i.e. my work is worth zilch). But once work is accepted into the system, once it is available to be judged, then it is and remains _art_. If aesthetics is concerned with value, then the market is one way of making that judgement. Other ways include academic or popular methods of assigning value. They are each as valid as another and as full of contradictions. But you can't have it both ways - that everything has equal value. Markets don't work like that. Nor do academic institutions, all are compromised.
> Seriously, artworks have value, otherwise why are people > protesting? Discussing why we believe works have value can be > illuminating. Conforming to the position that "all artworks > are equally useful for the writing of essays" is not very > useful for art, and is not avant-garde, being decades old in > any educational institution.
> Just because I dare say some art is aesthetically "better" > than some other art,
It is very brave of you, but it does not make it true.
> Likewise, as an "art" lover, I'm not obliged > to defend the artistic sanctity of Tracy Emin's work. Not > simply because her work is "bad," but because of the specific > way in which it's "bad." It's anti-art that laughs at craft > and questions the practice of assigning aesthetic value to > artwork in the first place.
Do you mean it's anti-art _because_ it laughs at craft? Can't art laugh at craft? Can't art question the practice of assigning aesthetic value? Isn't that part of the job of art?
Or - whose aesthetic value do we want to assign to artwork? Yours? My dads? George Bush's?