Chris and Design Good design, Bad Design and my opinion.
Art or Artifact? Posted on September 1, 2011 by Christopher Allen
The whole art/artifact issue has a lot to do with whomever is viewing it. While some people seem to think that the only purpose of art is to ‘push boundaries’ (direct quote) and make some sort of statement to reach into the soul of and challenge the thinking of whomever is making and/or viewing it, I really don’t think that the Greeks had any grand way of thinking with their urns, yet who could deny that they are art? They are beautiful to look at, and probably took a fairly skilled artisan to make them in the first place. It is, however, an artifact as well. (from Merriam-Websters) Something created by humans usually for a practical purpose; especially: an object remaining from a particular period (caves containing prehistoric artifacts) These urns were probably used for carrying water or wine, so useful purpose like that. But they are nice to look at too. This idea has been used for most of time, with just the rooms of colonial houses represented in museums (The Nelson is Kansas City, for example.) Even though these things may or may not have been thought of as art when they are made, they still qualify as art now. So when something like a door knocker is considered art, it should only be natural that something made with far less skill, such as a cave painting or a fertility doll- that was considered art by the people making them- should be considered art as well. And also, they are artifacts. They tell something about the society that used them. In just the same way as the a primitive example of Slave art from the American South would be considered an artifact due to the insight it gave to the understanding of the slave point of view. Art is a curious beast. It can look at a bowl made by the Wichita Indians and simply marvel art how it was made. One could just admire the curves and the craftsmanship. You can look at the materials that were used to craft it, or the tools that may have been used. But the idea of the society that produced that craftsmanship would only have a marginal interest.
Archeology (the people interested in the bowl as an artifact) may not care at all how well it’s made. The main concern is ‘what can this bowl tell us about the society that created it?’. This, in a nutshell is the main difference between the two concepts of art and artifact. Art is interested in the object. It wants the understand the bowl, painting, statue, whatever. Artifacts, by definition, tell about a society. The people that see an artifact are really more concerned with the society that the artifact tells them about. Who were the Wichita Indians? Why did they make a bowl like this? Did it have something to do with their environment or beliefs? What was it about their environment or beliefs that caused them to make the bowl in this way? By asking these questions they tried to get into the minds of, and therefore the culture of whatever group of people that they were studying- in this case it would be the Wichita Indians. The pottery is really only a portal into there understanding of the culture. Art, on the other hand, seems to be about the object in particular. While this isn’t completely true, it does seem to be the main idea behind the study of the piece, just as while the archeologist may find beauty in the piece itself, the culture is the main point behind his study of this bowl. A while back I heard something at a talk. Human nature does not evolve. It had never occurred to me before, but I believe that it’s true. Our society tolerates somethings and doesn’t tolerate other things. A lot of these things are pretty much the same as they were two thousand years ago. Bigotry and tolerance goes in and out of voguefor instance, in the early part of our country African Americans were treated a lot better than they were in the 1800s, when it became horrible. While homosexuality is considered simply just one way of existing in our contemporary culture, 20-50 years ago it was considered totally abhorrent in our country. Yet it’s pretty much the same as ancient Greece. Humans are humans. Their surroundings are different, but their basic natures aren’t. So if we can similarities to people that were alive 2500 years ago, why can’t we have similarities with people that are separated by distance? To put it another way, there are only so many basic ideas that people can do with art. There are cave paintings that actually are more ‘primitive’ than some that were made in an earlier era. How can this be? Maybe they aren’t primitive, but rather abstract? If you were to look at one of Picasso’s pieces and compared it to Rembrandt 1000 years from now, which one would you see as more modern based on the observed skill of the painter? Picasso can paint realistically, he just chose not to in his later work. The same could be said for the artists at later times than the Chauvet cave. This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.
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