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THE THREE PROPERTIES OF ART:

1) NARRATIVE – VALUE JUDGEMENTS (CONCEPTUAL CONTENT),

2) DECORATION – PATTERN AND FERTILITY (AESTHETIC CONTENT),

3) CRAFT – MASTERY OF MATERIALS (MATERIAL SCIENCE CONTENT)

Art carries myth, and value judgment. It is a symbolic narrative. Decoration carries patterns. Or it conveys the idea of fertility, plenty, or evidence of human effort or care, which to humans, are the universal symbols for beauty. Craft is an expression of material science: our mastery of the materials themselves.

These three differences in content demarcate the fine arts from the decorative arts, from craft. “High Art” combines all three dimensions of concept, aesthetic, and craft, for the purpose of creating cultural unity.

Almost all educated people can use these techniques to evaluate any artistic creation. a) what is the mythical, political, philosophical, narrative content? b) Are patterns (composition) and beauty (presence of resources such as fertility) rendered with sophistication and insight? c) how craftsmanly is the work produced? if you answer these three questions any work can be judged – and the nonsense that you should just ‘feel’ art and fail to understanding it simply a marketing ploy by hucksters.

Three pressures have devolved our high arts.

1) The Medium That Is Movies

Movies are so profitable, seen so widely, distributed so cheaply, naturally narrative, and aesthetically effective that they have absorbed almost the entire artistic production of the nation. All prior arts seem iconic and quaint by comparison.

But the internationalization of movies has forced the eradication of the western mythological narrative from our scripts. Western heroism is appealing to males everywhere. But western exceptionalism is a curse. This problem is fascinating and threatens the industry because only blockbusters draw large crowds, but the heroic content of movies is limited to either familial sentiments, zombies, or aliens, because we can no longer criticize or demonize the competing heroic symbolism of other cultures given the need to exploit their population as a market.

2) Economics

The demand for decorative arts in the home, and craftsmanship (design of household goods) because of the vast numbers of the populace that have joined the consumer (middle) classes, has created demand for inexpensive decorative arts for every social class, each of which has different value judgements. The decrease in prices from industrial production has made it possible for more people to enter the arts, but at the cost of an inability of the market to sufficiently filter out would-be artists incapable of synthesizing art, design, and craft.

3) The European cultural loss of identity and self confidence.

The combination of socialism’s pressure for equality rather than excellence, feminism’s pressure to demonize christian white males, and the postwar self hatred of our aristocratic western origins have conspired not only to take power in government but to redefine beauty not as excellence but as rebellion.

The myths that gave rise to our desire for excellence, greatness, and the high-trust-society, have been driven out of fashion by consumerism, socialism, feminism, and self doubt.

We have, as a tribe, race, and people, surrendered our myths to the age of skepticism – when all cultures, along with their arts, go to die.

But that should not prevent the few of us who aspire to excellence from acquiring the skill with which to analyze, interpret, and make judgements about the arts, using the very simple method I have outlined here:

Narrative and its value judgements.

Design and it’s aesthetic devices.

Craft and it’s material devices.

Cheers.