Art with a capital A
This is what Sir Ernst Gombrich writes in the very first sentences of his immensely popular The Story of Art, the million-selling handbook which went through sixteen editions since its first appearence in 1950:
"There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists. Once these were men who took coloured earth and roughed out the forms of a bison on the wall of a cave; today some buy their paints, and design posters for the hoardings; they did and do many other things. There is no harm in calling all these activities art as long as we keep in mind that such a word may mean very different things in different times and places, and as long as we realize that Art with a capital A has no existence. For Art with a capital A has come to be something of a bogey and a fetish."
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According to Gombrich, "There really is no such thing as art. There are only artists." E.H. Gombrich obviously wrote his narrative of Western Art from a less conventional, but traditional angle. Nearly fifty years before Art Historians, critics and visual thinkers began revising the Western Art Cannon, Gombrich put forth the idea that art as we know it does not exist. As a purely cultural construction, "Art" ( with a capital A") is only idea. All that really exists is the people who make "it".
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When Gombrich said there is no Art- he was referring to the modern world's definition of art with a capital "A." I find the statement liberating. Art with a small "a" is open to interpretation. Its limitless qualities can be contained only by the human mind. Great artists will break beyond the confines of what has been done before them; they will surpass their masters.
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He econtrado estas cosas...me parecen...interesantes.