Walker,Walker wrote: ↑Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:52 amI think concerns about truth may take attention away from the quality of the art. I've seen so-called conceptual art that I wouldn't want to buy because of the low quality. Of course, defining quality drove Pirsig mad, so suffice it to say within the scope of passing attention, that quality is self-evident. Like, low-rent is self-evident. Craftsmanship is an indication of quality.popeye1945 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 31, 2022 3:22 am Truth is experience, the truth in art is the truth of its experience, was it the intention of the artist, who knows his intentional experience might not be what the admiring subject might experience? It's relative to a conscious subject on both sides of the endeavor. I suppose the term, the truth in art might mean that this is when the two are one in the same way as subject and object.
The way I figure it:
Realistic painting = 95% artist and 5% witness.
Impressionistic painting = 70% artist and 30% witness.
One framed empty canvas = 0% artist and 100% witness.
The same principle of balance can be applied to all art forms. Artist and witness join to form the complete work.
The numbers may fluctuate, and they do exclude the fantasy 110-percenters.
Certainly quality is important, indeed the term art depends upon it for the fewer of those qualities it has the closer in comes to the ugly and/or the monstrosity. This in effect brings the object nearer to extinction and further away from the intention of the artist. Whatever the art object is it has a category, it is a member of a kind an example of its species against which it is to be measured. It is about the rhythm and the radiance of near perfection, of being a celebration of the object. You don't often see a painting of withered and dying flowers though that could be a metaphor for the sorrows of the world. Generally, beauty is considered the radiance of well-being in all its forms. Great art might at the same time as representing this beauty also have within the same frame an indication of its temporality. I believe art is communication and perhaps most artists who take offense to being asked what it is about it is because if you have to ask, the artist has failed.