This blog is a notebook for me to record points around the issues:
is it art
what is art
if it is art, is it good art
By maintaining it, I hope
>to explore all the repeating thoughts in my head and to record them
>to receive any comments made
>to makr a notebook preparatory to setting up another blog or a webpage called (maybe) ‘Is it and what is Art’
Because it is my own blog and notebook, I reserve the right to be incoherent and disorganized. Having said that, I welcome comments that further the enquiry from people who can tolerate this.
today’s thought is from Geoff Dyer’s introduction to John Berger’s Understanding a Photograph, p.xv:
In 1960 Berger had defined his aesthetic criteria simply and confidently: ‘does this work help or encourage men to know and claim their social rights?’
note that this is Berger’s ‘aesthetic criteria’ …. does this mean that it helps to decide the question ‘is it art’ or the question ‘is it good art’?
It strikes me that Berger is washing one part of the elephant. (Except that I would apologise to him for the rudeness and crassness of such a remark and ask him to excuse it because it is useful to me for my enquiry.)
Possibly, he is washing the most important part
isitartdotco 