What is Art? Can A Civil War be Art?

CAN A CIVIL WAR BE ART?

A brief history of European Art

While objects of art had been created for several thousands of years, it was only during the Renaissance that the word “art” was first used as a collective term to encompass the activities of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Subsequently, this was expanded to include music and poetry and these activities became known as “fine arts”.
During the Middle Ages art objects were created to serve the Church and its teachings. The objects generally consisted of paintings of religious figures with little or no attempt at realism.
The next major movement in painting, started with the renaissance and moved into impressionism, consisted of creating realistic images of people and landscapes, usually for rich patrons.
As a result, the original artistic theory formulated by philosophers was that of imitation—the evaluation of artworks by their relation to the real world. It was a good artwork if it was a good rendering of something already in existence. Because existing media used by artists were quite limited, identifying art was easy, the only issue was quality. Many of the greatest works of art are appreciated for the resemblance of their depiction to reality.
In the twentieth century recognizable objects began to disappear from the canvases of artists and music became atonal and dissonant. The essence of art was no longer to depict reality, but to emphasize the aesthetics used to create the object. This has made the issue of identifying an art object more difficult.

Art and Philosophy

Modern philosophers have contemplated the question of what makes art good or bad, in fact, what makes art? There are almost as many answers to those questions as there are philosophers. Until recently, however, most theories fell into one of two categories. The first was that the object itself has certain aesthetic qualities that make it art and the second was the measure its emotional impact on its audience. However, because the great variation in art today there is widespread disagreement about this issue.
In 1757 David Hume wrote “The Standard of Taste.” He advocated a subjective standard believing that art is in the eye of the beholder, even though some critics are more qualified to pass judgment than others. While he believes in the existence of general rules of art or aesthetics, he knows that everyone will view them differently. Hume feels the best way to determine art is via the judgment of those who are experienced in the field.
Hume outlines what is required to improve one's taste and to be a true judge of some kinds of art. The factors that are needed are: "Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice." However, Hume agrees that finding these capabilities within one person will be a challenge.
Hume outlines a very broad brush approach to evaluating art, basically leaving it up to the art expert to make the decision. Unfortunately, however, he offers very little to objectively help in deciding the issue. Hume’s article was written when the imitative theory was popular and before much of a controversy existed. Thus, it is not surprising that his review lacks sharp focus and penetration.
One hundred and fifty years later, in 1896, Leo Tolstoy wrote “What is Art.” He agreed with the latter theory arguing that art is a method of communicating feelings. He stated “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings...” Thus art is created, in his opinion, when an artist expresses his emotions, via his chosen media, to his audience.
Acceptance of this theory makes drastic changes in what is normally accepted as art. Because the spectrum of human emotion is quite broad, this definition is inclusive of many activities that would not normally be thought of as art. Tolstoy stated, “All human life is filled with works of art of every kind.” He would include as art “all human activity transmitting feelings … for which we …attach special importance.” Additionally, because emotion must be felt by the viewer, it potentially eliminates much of today’s existing art.
To test the quality of the art, Tolstoy proposes a method of assessing the infectiousness of the emotion transmitted. He measures the infectiousness using three conditions: 1. the amount of individual feeling transmitted by the artist, 2. the clearness of expression transmitted, and 3. the sincerity transmitted by the artist. Tolstoy felt the third criterion was the most important and is the main reason why good art has such a powerful reaction on the viewer. Also, if none of these conditions are present than the object is not art, or is counterfeit art.
Tolstoy refers to an additional concept for evaluating art that he refers to as “religious perception” or religious consciousness to differentiate the quality of art. He believes that Christian art is the only art that “tends to unite all without exception.” This is a very narrow ethnocentric view. The fact that creators of Western religious images have an inside track on art is naïve.
I am troubled by the theory that the intention of an artist is available at all times to the user and is the sole standard for judging whether or not it is art.. It took Michelangelo four years to finish the Sistine Chapel fresco. How or at what point do you determine his emotion behind the work? Might he have had several? Because J. S. Bach wrote his Cantatas solely because his job required him to compose music for his church service and therefore we can assume with little or no emotion, can it be denied that they are not art? While there are certain exceptions like Munch’s “The Scream,” when asked to explain the emotion that the artist might have had when creating the art object, the answer will reveal more about the person giving the answer then the creator of the art object.
Like almost all philosophers approaching this problem, Tolstoy’s evaluation is very personal and doesn’t make a universal statement about art.
In 1984, Thomas Wolfe, one of America’s leading authors, wrote “The Worship of Art” for Harpers Magazine. It is more a sociological based article than philosophical one in which he expresses his dislike of the current minimalist art movement, particularly that of sculpture.
He observes that today educated Easterners view religion as a matter of “social pedigree” and art as their new religion. By religion he means a conspicuous badge worn to indicate status and wealth to others. To prove his argument he claims that it is currently fashionable for the wealthy to give financial gifts to the arts instead of religion. And instead of erecting cathedrals as they have done in the past, large corporations are donating money to built “gigantic cultural complexes” like the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Wolfe does not give any theory on what art is, except that he does like the “pictures and sculptures” from previous eras, and he does not like minimalist sculptures.
Wolfe is an interesting writer with good inside into people. However, based upon this article I am not impressed with his ability as an art philosopher.
Finally, Arthur Danto, in 1964, wrote “The Art World.” He is a well known art critic and philosopher. Danto agrees that “telling art works from other things is not so simple a matter,” and more importantly he sees this as a challenge, not an affront like Wolfe.
To explain his theory, Danto uses the example of two items that are identical, but one of them is a work of art and the other is just an object. His example is a box of brillo pads and a sculpture of a box of brillo pads. There is no perceptual method that can be used to identify which one is the artwork. Therefore, he concludes that art must defined by philosophic, not perceptual means.
To develop his theory he defines an “artworld” as an environment where artistic theory and knowledge of art history exist. Then it is a necessary and sufficient condition of a work of art that it is created in an artworld. Applying this theory to the above example, if the sculpture was created in an artworld, it is art.
He does not give a specific definition of artworld so I can only guess that includes most, if not all, of the organizations involved with art including art schools, museums, art critics, and universities. My objection to this definition is that it could be to elitist by rejecting some works based upon lack of sophistication of the creator that might otherwise qualified.
Can a Civil War be Art?
Until the twentieth century, art represented pictorially the society that produced it. Such things as dress, rituals, religion, and politics are all seen represented in art of the period. Today it is still a representation of society, but the media used for the representation has expanded.
From the Middle Ages until the renaissance there was little change in the appearances of most art. Starting in the seventeenth century various schools of thought began to appear which gradually changed art from realistic to abstract. Recent developments significantly expanded of the use of its materials, media, activity and concept used to create the art work. This new movement emphasized that the concept or idea involved in the work was more important than the traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Art has become a more cognative activity and identifying it only through visual means become limiting.
Examples of such art are: Duchamp's Fountain, created in 1917, was a standard urinal basin, Rauschenberg painting in which he erased a drawing by De Kooning, John Cage’s musical composition which consisted of twenty minutes of silence, and recently Creed’s The Lights Going On and Off, an empty room where the lights go on and off. Additionally, the entire genre of Performance Art which is any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience.
Since theory and knowledge expand over time, what is defined and accepted as art must also change. The world has to be ready for certain things, as Danto points out “there could not have been flight insurance in the middle ages.” This outlook leads me to embrace Danto’s perception of art – an object created in an artworld is art.
Such major changes in art are (1) so different from any previous movement, and (2) comprehensive enough to allow other artists to contribute, that Thomas Kuhn would have referred to it as a paradigm shift. With this shift new theories are necessary to allow the idendification of art. It can not longer viewed as simply an aestetic endeavor.
A civil war is a war in which groups within the same nationality fight against each other for the control of political power. An additional requirement is for a certain number of casualties, usually over 1000. It is almost always fought over ideology, where each side believes in and is ready to die for their beliefs. It always is accompanied by strong emotions on both sides.
I believe that art doesn’t exist without an artist to create it. Since a civil war has no creative intent behind it, it cannot be a work of art. Reality is not art, even though some may argue that God is the creator. A sunset may be beautiful, but it is not art. Wind chimes may be musical, but it is not music. However, there are some aspects of a civil that might otherwise qualify it as art.
Tolstoy’s requirement of emotion would certainly be there. Viewers who were citizens of the country where the war is taking place would certainly have high emotions for their cause. Additionally, the sincerity of emotion would be clear on the faces of the participants of the war. However, I believe Tolstoy would say there is no emotion communicated from the artist to be communicated to the viewer.
Danto would comment that it was not created in an artworld. Reality, while it may be beautiful, is not art.
Another argument against it being art is the geographic size of a civil war. The size makes the concept incomprehensible to the viewer. They are usually fought intercountry making its size, even in a small country, of hundreds of square miles.

In 1991 Christo and 1,880 workers opened 3,100 umbrellas in Ibaraki, Japan and California, in two inland valleys, one 12 miles and the other 18 miles long. While this is a large artwork, it is quite small compared to any civil war.
The counter argument might be that this is really a series of art objects where the battles and skirmishes are the individual pieces.
Hume would probably say “Ask Danto and whatever he said would be right,” since art is in the eye of the beholder, especially a knowledgeable one.
Wolfe would probably write a sarcastic essay on the absurdity of calling this art.
There are two other areas that need to be mentioned. The first would be live coverage of the war via television or video on the Internet. Both of these in a sense would have a creator, the crew that filmed the event. Assuming that the crew had proper training and understanding of television techniques and it history, it would seem that this would fit either Tolstoy’s or Danto’s requirements for art.
The second would be either a painting or a photograph of a battle scene. Both of these, while not being a war, would also be art under either theory.