[NewMusic] Fwd: Free Public Relations and Marketing Strategies Workshops

[Matthew Goodheart]

On May 20, 2008, at 10:40 PM, Michael Henry wrote:

> Aesthetically speaking....are you suggesting that marketing cannot  
> be a form of entertainment or art?


The grumpy mg writes:

Y'know, if your going to be a thorn in one's side (and by all means,  
please do) at least do it about something real. This is an exhausted  
argument that seems to have legs purely because of semantic laziness.  
The problem is that you haven't defined the word "art" in this  
context, and are therefor bouncing off the modern conflation of the  
word "art" with the concept "high art" - a concept that has been  
challenged and broken over the last 100 years or so, its conditions  
having easily been demonstrated to be culturally prejudicial. Hence we  
live in a time of fluid definition: "art" stands for whatever we want  
it to mean in that instant we utter it, yet as a word it continues to  
maintain a certain cultural power as a reference for something  
valuable and desirable and concrete. Therefore, to argue whether  
something is "art" is a bogus argument; one can only realistically  
discuss whether a particular "piece of work" fits a particular  
definition of a mode of artistic intentionality (yes, and  anti- 
intentional blah blah), and even that is a discussion of limited  
value, usually associated with one's late teens amidst voluminous  
clouds of smoldering cannabis and the attempt to place one's hands  
within the pants of whomever is sitting next to you. . .

  There's no there, there.




For your amusement, the prevailing definitions of art from the OED,  
almost all of which interject themselves in one form or another into  
any conversation on the subject:

     I. Skill; its display or application. Sing. art (abstractly); no  
plural.
     	1. gen. Skill in doing anything as the result of knowledge and  
practice.
     	2. a. Human skill as an agent, human workmanship. Opposed to  
nature.
    	    b. Artifice, artificial expedient. (Cf. 12.) Obs.
	 3. The learning of the schools; see 7.    {dag}a. spec. The trivium,  
or one of its subjects, grammar, logic, rhetoric; dialectics.
	    b. gen. Scholarship, learning, science. arch.
	    c. words or terms of art: words peculiar to, or having a peculiar  
use in, a particular art or pursuit; technical terms.
	4. spec. Skill in applying the principles of a special science;  
technical or professional skill. Obs.
        5. The application of skill to subjects of taste, as poetry,  
music, dancing, the drama, oratory, literary composition, and the  
like; esp. in mod. use:       	Skill displaying itself in perfection  
of workmanship, perfection of execution as an object in itself. Phr.  
art for art's sake. Hence in many allusive 		phrases
     6. The application of skill to the arts of imitation and design,  
painting, engraving, sculpture, architecture; the cultivation of these  
in its principles, practice, and results; the skilful production of  
the beautiful in visible forms.
   (This is the most usual modern sense of art, when used without any  
qualification. It does not occur in any English Dictionary before  
1880, and seems to have been chiefly used by painters and writers on  
painting, until the present century.)and Rome form in themselves a  
complete history of Art.

     II. Anything wherein skill may be attained or displayed. Sing. an  
art; pl. arts.
     7. a. chiefly in pl. Certain branches of learning which are of  
the nature of intellectual instruments or apparatus for more advanced  
studies, or for the work of life; their main principles having been  
already investigated and established, they are in the position of  
subjects requiring only to be acquired and practised. Applied in the  
Middle Ages to ‘the trivium and quadrivium, a course of seven  
sciences, introduced in the sixth century...the trivium contained  
grammar, logic, and rhetoric; the quadrivium arithmetic, geometry,  
music, and astronomy' (Hallam); called also the free or liberal arts.  
Hence the ‘faculty’ of arts, and arts ‘curriculum,’ embracing the  
portions of these, with subsequent additions and alterations, still  
studied at the Universities, and the degrees of ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Master  
of Arts’ conferred upon students who attain to a prescribed standard  
of proficiency in these branches of knowledge, or, as it is called,  
‘graduate in arts.’
     8. A practical application of any science; a body or system of  
rules serving to facilitate the carrying out of certain principles. In  
this sense often contrasted with science.
     9. a. esp. An industrial pursuit or employment of a skilled  
nature; a craft, business, profession.
     b. A guild, or company of craftsmen.
     10. A pursuit or occupation in which skill is directed towards  
the gratification of taste or production of what is beautiful. Hence  
the Arts: (specifically) = the fine arts;
     11. In prec. senses, but particularized:{em}    a. by an  
adjective, as magic art (or the black art), military art, the healing  
art. industrial, mechanical, useful arts: those in which the hands and  
body are more concerned than the mind. fine arts: those in which the  
mind and imagination are chiefly concerned.
     b. by a genitive or genitive phrase, as ‘the painter's art,’ ‘the  
art of painting.’
     12. An acquired faculty of any kind; a power of doing anything  
wherein skill is attainable by study and practice; a knack.

     III. Skilful, crafty, or artificial conduct.
     13. Studied conduct or action, especially such as seeks to attain  
its ends by artificial, indirect, or covert means; address; cunning,  
artfulness.
     14. An artifice, contrivance, stratagem, wile, trick, cunning  
device. Chiefly in pl.



AND perhaps more importantly - a definition of "high" in relation to  
the word "art"

  6. a. Of exalted quality, character, or style; of lofty, elevated,  
or superior kind; high-class.  Freq. in high art, comedy, culture.



Matthew Goodheart
composer ~ improviser ~ pianist
matthew at matthewgoodheart.com
http://matthewgoodheart.com
http://myspace.com/matthewgoodheart