kaymac 2.5.08

In my art history class we are smack dab in the middle of the Renaissance. In this, we started talking about neo-platonism. In this theory, everything we create is based off of the ideal yet we cannot make perfect copies of it, so therefore everything we create is an imperfect copy of the ideal. This really made Benjamin's reading clear to me.

I always think it is difficult to define art and so when somebody asks you to explain why a rock with red paint on it is art compared to a rock with white paint splattered over it, you can never give a full answer. Art is always in the context that it is seen in. Like the example Dr. Rog gave us with the woman putting her drink on the sculpture and a bum telling her it was art versus the VP of the college. If you take art out of it's context, like the cave painting, it grows into something else. The cave painting is no longer part of the cave. When you look at it, you are no longer standing in the spot that Uga Uga stood in while s/he painted it and therefore it has a different feeling and context.

Finally, "everybody who witnesses its [a film's] accomplishments is somewhat of an expert...At any moment, the reader is ready to turn into a writer (27)." What gets me the most is the first part of this quote. How many times have you heard, after somebody sees the original of a Monet or Picasso or even a Pollock, somebody say that they could have created that work if they tried. This goes for all art. People find it to be trivial, I think, and that is why they believe they can be experts on it, because if it is not important, then anybody can say whatever they want of it as long as they have seen the original because they are close to what "experts" would have done, which is looked at the original.