Artifact 1- What is Art?

In unit 3 we explored the question What is Art?  by reading Ellen Dissanayake’s article What Is Art For? and by watching a video presentation by Denis Dutton. The objective for this assignment that I was most interested in and felt I explored most was examining multiple perspectives for evaluating art. The authors of the assigned reading and presentations had similar yet different views about how to evaluate art and I really enjoyed getting to learn about their two opinions. It helped me towards collecting what my own ideas about art are and helped towards expanding my feelings about the ways that art is viewed.

I first watched the video by Denis Dutton who explained his interpretations about how art should be examined based on the amount of effort, time, and skill that goes into making a certain piece. This was something that I had never really thought about before, so it was interesting to be exposed to this new idea. I agree that when researching or just observing art, one should take into consideration what the artist went through to make their piece. It is very valuable to when an artist has put their heart and soul into something. Ellen Dissanayake also believes that what goes into making an art piece is very importatnt. She has come up with her own way of labeling this with the phrase “making special”, which means that an artist took lots of time making their piece, that it is something special to them. Both Dissanayake and Dutton’s ideas about the work put into an art piece is an important aspect of looking at art. This was something that I had never really paid attention to in the past, but after reading the article and watching the presentation I have new outlook on observing art. I can now think more deeply about a piece after knowing what a particular artist has put in to making something.

In Dutton’s presentation he discussed that he does not believe that culture does not have anything to do with how people observe and appreciate art. He does not think that ones views are defined by where they come from. This is something that I disagreed with in his presentation because I think that where someone comes from and their culture plays a huge role in shaping them, so in tune it would also help towards defining their views of art. To me it seemed like Dutton believe that some people think that if one person is from a certain culture, then they have they same views as everyone else in their culture and he thought this was not right or true. I do not believe that all people from the same place have the same views, but I do think that it was their culture that played a role in their certain beliefs. I think it is interesting to know ones views on art in comparison to their culture and where they are from.