Re: lexicon

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>

> It also must have originated a really really
> really long time ago in order to have time to be specialized to the
> degree that it has.   Given the time involved, I find it incredibly
> unlikely that our first language-using ancestors were sufficiently
developed
> to be artistic.
Why do you think that?  Why can't art also be "hard-wired" in the brain?
It's a form of expression, it's very likely an outcome of "tool-making"
skills.  We were developing nimble fingers along with our nimble tongues.
Singing might have been one of our very first expressive vocalizations.

> No such fundamental blueprints exist for art; art is by its very nature
> the ultimate in free expression, refusing to obey set channels or rules.
Forgive me Mark, but you are only defining western twentieth-century art,
and western twentieth-century art theory.  This reads as though it comes
right out of a seventies lecture on "conceptual art," the kind of stuff I
was spoon fed the entire time I was taking painting lessons and art history.
Surely, you can't neglect the formalist, rule-bound art that preceded the
twentieth century--and still persists.  Look at medieval art.  Renaissance
art and the Golden Mean.  Look at Insular interlace design.  Look at
Egyptian art.  How do these "refuse to obey set channels or rules"?  They
differ, yes, from school to school, and they change, but so does language.

> It is practically indefinable.  And artistic ability varies dramatically
> among human individuals, far more than linguistic ability.   The
> drive to create is an instinct; art isn't.
I still think that you are thinking in terms of talent at drawing or playing
an instrument...  I think that the art that Michael was thinking of is more
basic than that.  I think if you lived in an artless society (and here I
mean no city-planning, no gardens, no variety or delight taken in food
preparation, no clothing other than something to protect you from the
weather, no theater, no cinema, no music) you would protest.  Asceticism,
espoused by some of the more austere orders, is the exception to the rule;
but then look at the ancient temples and Gothic cathedrals.  The psalms.
The Israelites dancing in praise of God.

> Besides, every other medium used for art - painting,
> writing, music - was originally utilitarian; only later did people
> have the luxury of using these things for art.  I don't see why
> language would be any different.
This statement just feels wrong to me.  How do you know it wasn't
apotropaic, for example?  Or religious?  The notion that art today is a
"luxury," or that we could do without it, or even that it's non-utilitarian,
seems wrong to me.  Even the houses we live in are structured by "art."  I
suppose we could all live in modules with a food dispenser, but look at
commerce today, ready to sell millions of compact disc-players.  Art is a
fundamental aspect of human society and has been from the beginning,
evolving along with language and culture.  What has changed our
understanding of this basic human truth is the scientific revolution, and
scientific materialism.  We are basically machines, we function to get
things done, society functions to provide us with the basics, art is an
excrescence belonging to those "humanist" guys.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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