Topics Art

Question This semester I started attending a seminar on (I'm translating from German hear) "The Meaning of Art". The professor began with a long-winded speech about how most people, hearing the title, would no doubt assume the topic is the role of art in our lives. He then went on to say that the question of art's role in society/our lives is incoherent if we don't first develop an understanding of the nature of art itself (particularly to what extent it is communicative), and that we will therefore focus more on the question of the nature of art rather than its role. This seems, to me, to be backwards. Art doesn't exist in presocial a void. How are we supposed to understand the nature of art without looking at the role it plays in society? I would think that especially the question of whether art is communicative can only be answered by looking at whether it is used to communicate, i.e. its role in society. Am I misunderstanding the claim, or is the professors approach genuinely backwards?

Accepted:
April 12, 2012

Comments

Let me make a remark in support of your long-winded professor, and I am afraid that sort of pedagogy does rather go with the discipline.

I think your professor is right, and perhaps he felt he needed to make the point at some length, as often happens in such cases. Art does have a role in society, but then so do many things, and unless you know what art is, how can you distinguish between its role and that of other cultural forms? Many things are used to communicate also, and not all of them are art, so it is worth spending some time deciding what art actually is first.