Tonight in my "Great Films" class we watched a straight-up bit of surrealist film that historically made Salvador Dali jealous. Really. Apparently when it was being screened he kicked over the projector. So imagine watching a film that would make Dali green and then a subsequent discussion over what is art.
What is art?
That time old question. A little voice whispers in your ear to ignore it and enjoy a good honest rustic piece of pie instead. Like this one:
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| Quince Bisquit pie from Lottie+Doof |
But no. We fall into the trap, back to rice pudding postmodern theory because defining what qualifies as art is my new favorite metaphor to explain structuralism/the silliness of structuralism (I was referencing structuralism and Claude Levi-Strauss here). So the definitions of art used to be pretty rigid (now is not the time to argue about whether rigidity remains, good/bad etc). There were these pompous yet possibly sincere academy/salons in France that set the rules about what was art.
You may have seen this little piece, The Gleaners by Millet, before:
It was rejected by the Louvre.
Yeah, they were rigid.
Anyway, things get crazy with radicals like Courbet, Manet, Monet, and Cezanne. Don't blink there's the Salon des Refusés, Picasso, and people putting urinals on pedestals. All hell is breaking loose. Hide ya kids, hide ya wives, hide ya husbands too because the artists are having their say and then, rewind. The Gleaners. Not art. Art now but not art in 1857. Structuralists say language makes sense of the world for us, it's our mediator. Nobody is literally in contact with reality. So crazy things can happen like the Louvre rejecting aforementioned painting?
But here's an even greater example of where structuralism may get you (specifically the scene at 7min16:
Therefore we can conclude that structuralism leads to Jerry Lewis and Monty Python.
Second and open-ended conclusion: Is this where higher education gets you?
When I first saw the picture of the pie I thought about how artistic is was because it follows the rule of thirds. I think it's all art. That's why art is so great.
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