ART IS UNIVERSAL

(Jonathan Jones, 2015) Art is universal – no country should claim a masterpiece for their own

 Art has extremely ancient, perhaps even pre-Homo sapiens, origins. Hand axes made by H. ergaster one and a
half million years ago display a symmetry unrelated to function, and these was highly time-consuming to produce.
Forty thousand years ago, at Enkapune Ya Muto in Kenya, people made delicate strings of beads out of ostrich
eggshell, an extremely delicate process. While these artifacts lack the individual style of their makers, and are hence
better classified as craftworks, they nevertheless display a “disinterested”–this term will be explained later–
regard for appearance and form that is the hallmark of art.
 Every culture, no matter how isolated, sings, dances, tells stories, erects monuments, and draws visual patterns that
exploit regularity, repetition, and enclosure. Almost every culture makes visual images. In every culture, there are
codified styles or genres that govern each such activity.
 In every culture, there are connoisseurs who appreciate formal skill in these activities–skill in execution that goes
beyond the primary appeal of works in these media. For example, while the tune and the beat of a musical
performance give pleasure to almost all who share in the culture, there are always some specially knowledgeable
consumers who value aspects of the performance that are not evident to all–fine control of dynamics,
ornamentation, syncopation, breath-control, phrasing, and so on.
 At least some art works in every culture carry a kind of augustness or specialness that more quotidian artefacts lack.
They are highly worked and made from expensive, rare, and specially treated materials; they are kept in hallowed
places; possessing them is symbolic of power and wealth; they are associated with communal occasions on which
daily work is suspended for musical or dramatic performances, etc. Ellen Dissanayeke makes this specialness a
defining characteristic of art, and it is certainly true that every culture makes at least some art-objects special in
these ways. (One qualification: the specialness accorded to an artwork must manifest itself in
its creation and form. The millionth Mickey Mouse watch might have been placed in a museum: this would not
make it an artwork.)
 Most individuals appreciate some genres within every broad form of art. It is a recognized disability, for instance,
not to appreciate any form of music, and surely the same must be true of visual art and drama. And most can
recognize an artwork as such: for as Noël Carroll says (echoing a remark of Stephen Davies): “Europeans can
recognize a statue of Ganesha as an artwork without being able to know its symbolic import.” Similarly, it is evident
to us that the cave drawings at Lascaux are art, though they were created nearly 20,000 years ago in a context
completely unknown to us. (Nicolas Humphrey suggests that these were the products of pre-linguistic humans with
“pre-modern” minds. Extremely unlikely, but this would support the idea that art has pre-modern human origins.)
A qualification: recognition of artworks is far from infallible. A member of an isolated tribe might take a Mickey
Mouse watch to be an artwork, noting its colourful design and elaborate mechanical movement.
 The universality of art cannot be understood just by unique origin and cultural transmission. It is possible that there
was a first visual artwork from which all subsequent visual art descended. (This would be analogous to the invention
of potato- and wheat-washing by a single female Japanese macaque, Imo, and the subsequent imitative transmission
of the practice within her troup.) But even if this was so, art, technology, and language are parts of a suite of
cognitive capacities associated with the emergence of Homo sapiens. Colin Renfrew remarks:

[I]n the early days, when our species was beginning to differentiate from earlier ancestors such as Homo ergaster, it was not
simply the innate genetic capacity . . . to conceive of and make artifacts that was important. . . . The know-how of making and
using those artifacts was not passed on genetically . . . It was learned. . . In what we may term the speciation phase of human
development, up to around one hundred thousand years ago, genetic and cultural co-evolution must have been an important
mechanism, operating for more than a million years.

Renfrew’s point is that the human species differentiated itself from its predecessors (and thus became a separate species) by
evolving the capacity to teach and to learn sophisticated culture. Cultural transmission, including the cultural transmission of art,
is a part of evolved human nature: we are capable of learning to execute and appreciate complex artistic styles. On the plausible
assumption that the enjoyment of art is a prerequisite for learning it, it must also be of the historical essence of H.
sapiens that its members are capable of aesthetic appreciation. The single origin hypothesis presupposes these capacities of
appreciate and learn; it does not eliminate it.
Art seems, then, to be a part of human nature. It is evolved. Is it an adaptation?

REFERENCE

https://www.newappsblog.com/2012/04/minds-on-monday-art-is-universal-why.html

ART IS NOT NATURE

Nature is real. Birth, life, death is the cycle. Nature is beautiful and close to perfect since it was designed by God.

Art is a perceived, conceived idea on many items designed by man. Therefore, art can be beautiful and it can be horrible.
Generally, what man has touched results in anxiety and pain for others. These items man has created regarding art could be
perceived ideas of nature, of birth, of death, of emotions, of artificial intelligence, of hunger, of war but generally artists are
communicators! They are communicating their thoughts on issues. Today in our generation the world of people are truly suffering
and artists are communicating that pain. Gone are the Manet’s and Monet’s where artists painted flowers and parties of people
enjoying life. Today in your face all day are news items of war, death, genocide, hunger, drought, extreme weather phenomena,
scandals, Hollywood, and the last but not least corrupt politicians!! “We have lost that loving feeling,” so best we return to
nature to try and appreciate an item of beauty and perfection created by a perfect being.

If replication of nature is art then make it as perfect as possible, to be perfect it must be designed and created by your love and
caring as it was by the creator.

Art is not nature because by common consent people are not nature for many purposes. Everyone realizes, of course, that people
are as much a part of nature as anything else. And yet, for many purposes we want to make a distinction. Is that dam natural or
man made? Don’t put that in your garden it is not natural. Did you carve that tree branch like that or is it natural? people are
100% nature and yet more unlike the rest of nature than anything else on earth. So, the things people make are considered not
natural in any context that smacks of machine or tool assistance or knowledge in the making. In art, it is the modern tools and
civilization that really make the work not considered natural. People from cultures that are not industrial or modern are
considered far more natural than city folk. It is not entirely logical or scientific but the distinction is natural and useful.

REFERENCE

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-art-not-nature

ART INVOLVES EXERIENCE

"Art as Experience" is a major writing on aesthetics [the science which deduces from nature and taste the rules and principles of
art] by John Dewey. In his work Dewey defines this theory:

Whenever there is a coalescence into an immediately enjoyed qualitative unity of meanings and values drawn
from previous experience and present circumstances, life then takes on an aesthetic quality...an experience.

Art, then, is not merely the process by the artist; it involves both the artist and the active observer who encounter each other,
their mental environments, and their culture at large. That is, art is not just a recording of human experience, but it is an
involvement of human experience.

This involvement is known to anyone who has listened to a musical piece and felt moved emotionally or psychologically. It is
known to anyone who has felt a thrill at observing the beauty of a painting. It is known to anyone who has become identified
with a character in a book and been melancholic at the finish of a novel, for it has felt as though one has left a friend. Or, it is
known, too, the viewer of a drama in which one feels a connection with an actor, enjoys watching that actor, has learned
something from that actor's character. It is that simple: a connection of souls, a communication by the artist with the soul,
that creative part of the observer.

The notion of "Art as experience" implies that the creation of art must be something of personal and knowledgeable
value. In this conception of art, the creator must have intimate or a subjective link with their creation in order for both to have
validity. Art as experience is best applied when studying, for example, the Romantic poets, who stressed that the artist must
fully believe and immerse themselves in their art. This is a stark contrast to those who believe that art can be created from
one's own mind, without a personal link to it. For those that believe creating art is "simply a job," the art as experience folk
have something to say about that. In the belief of art as experience, the artists as sacrificer becomes a central archetype. These
individuals sacrificed themselves to become more understanding about their art and produce better art. A modern example of
this would be Heath Ledger's acting approach to portraying the Joker in The Dark Knight. His isolation in a hotel room with
only the script and other elements that helped him "understand" the character more became a critical reason why when seen on
the screen, we genuinely believe that Ledger is The Joker. When examining art as experience, we begin to understand that
there is a glory or artistic expression in who we are as human beings and what we do as authors of our own narratives.

REFERENCE

https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-do-you-mean-by-art-experience-plz-help-me-91283