Dressing, art and style

[Gruto]

Dressing is not an art like cooking is not art. Dressing may apply elements from the arts, but dressing must be useful. Art is useless. Dressing should create beauty and elegance. Art is beyond such demands. Art can be ugly, disturbing and alarming. Dressing is play. Art is for real (which doesn't mean it cannot be playful).

Style is dressing imitating the arts. Style is dressing claiming that it matters. Style is charming vanity. Art is virtue.

[NJS]

Dressing is not an art like cooking is not art. Dressing may apply elements from the arts, but dressing must be useful. Art is useless. Dressing should create beauty and elegance. Art is beyond such demands. Art can be ugly, disturbing and alarming. Dressing is play. Art is for real (which doesn't mean it cannot be playful).

Style is dressing imitating the arts. Style is dressing claiming that it matters. Style is charming vanity. Art is virtue.

Rely upon our Champion: Costi. Come forth on thy white charger and tilt!
NJS

[Costi]

Nicholas, you know me TOO well!

Gruto, your discourse is like that of Marx: if you accept the premises, you can’t disagree with the conclusions.
However, I believe a syllogism saying that
Dressing is useful
Art is not useful (I disagree with “useless” – maybe for those who can’t make out what art is)
ergo Dressing is not art
is little more than a (not very artfully dressed) sophism. The fact of being or not useful (and in what way? and what for? and for whom? and in what context?) is not an intrinsic quality of art – there is useful art (a designer chair) and there are useless practical objects.
I agree with the Japanese who, as far as I know, traditionally make no distinction between “major arts” and “minor arts”. Ikebana is just as much an “art” as painting. Because art is about HOW you do things – not about the result, or about its usefulness. Etymologically speaking, “art” has in its roots “(practical) skill” (old French), “craft” (Latin), “manner, mode” (Sanskrit AND German “Art”, rather than “Kunst”) - http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=art
Therefore, there can be just as much art in cooking or tailoring and just as little in sculpting or singing “artlessly”.
Dressing can be an art, if practised as such. While covering one’s body to protect it from the elements (or shame) may be useful or practical, “dressing” goes beyond that necessity and can become art.
Style, in the LL acception, is not about art, it is about discovering oneself and letting that discovery find expression. Style is not about dressing prettily, not about having bespoke suits made, not about wearing silk ties. It is not a skill (craft) to be taught, either. It is simply (?) being oneself. That is why it is the most difficult thing in life and we keep looking for explanations, systems, philosophies etc. just to avoid having to face that simple truth.
Oh – and dress can also be ugly, disturbing and alarming AND useless, and still not qualify as art.

[Gruto]

I believe a syllogism saying that
Dressing is useful
Art is not useful (I disagree with “useless” – maybe for those who can’t make out what art is)
ergo Dressing is not art
is little more than a (not very artfully dressed) sophism. The fact of being or not useful (and in what way? and what for? and for whom? and in what context?) is not an intrinsic quality of art – there is useful art (a designer chair) and there are useless practical objects.

It is an observation, not a deduction. Don't analyze it. Sense it

To put it differently, dressing must have a connection to a practical purpose like keeping us warm and comfortable, just like food must satisfy us. Without that, we end in pure adornation. Balzac didn't like that. We don't like that.

Art can do whatever it feels necessary to do in comparison with dressing and cooking. We cannot say what it should do without squeezing it to death.

"All art is quite useless." (Oscar Wilde)

[Costi]

Dear Gruto,

I hope you are not taking Wilde's witty remarks either seriously or literally...
for art's sake!

Writing (art?) did put some bread on Balzac's table.
I think I wrote that before - a rich lady once acquired a Picasso for 10 000 francs from the author. Afterwards she asked the artist what the painting represented. Picasso replied: "To me, it's 10 000 francs. To you, it's a Picasso".
10 000 are very useful, I can assure you... The artist doesn't always produce with the profund convicition that he shall change the world.

Sense it

I can't sense it if it doesn't make sense to me. But I trust that YOU sensed it profoundly...

[NJS]

Costi - I wondered whether to put on my elkskin rompersuit and fetch my cudgel but I see that you have got it under control with your lance and broadsword.
NJS

[shredder]

I seem to have got off the wrong exit. Where am I?

[Gido]

I agree with the Japanese who, as far as I know, traditionally make no distinction between “major arts” and “minor arts”.

i've recently read the pillow book, written by a japanese court poet called sei shonagon, a thousand years ago. i remember she made a distinction. these where different from our values, for instance calligraphy and perfumery ranked among the highest of art forms. personally, i agree with the latter, but i guess most people would look funny at me for declaring that.

[Gido]

I seem to have got off the wrong exit. Where am I?

don't panic. you are at viewtopic.php?f=45&t=10452&p=59736#p59735
a perfectly decent neighborhood.

[NJS]

I seem to have got off the wrong exit. Where am I?

Probably on your way to the airport by now.
NJS

[Gruto]

The artist doesn't always produce with the profund convicition that he shall change the world.

Of couse not, have I said that?

My point is that art is categorically different from dressing and style. Dressing and style is half art / half practicality. Art is art. In a way, it is that simple



NJS: Why do I always get this picture in my mind, when you are around?

[NJS]

^Gruto, I don't know because they are not properly dressed for the opera! Apart from that: possibly for a reason comparable to that for which I always hear this in my head when you are around:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uanE7YxW0E

[rodes]

A most interesting discourse. I weigh in abstractly as a philosopher in the Platonic tradition. Beauty is a virtue and in the strict sense of the word, never practical or useful such as the skills of cooking or sheltering from the elements. Art is a particular manifestation of beauty as are music and literature. As such and by defination it can not be ugly. In other words art is beauty descended into a particular. IMHO, style is a further manifestation of art. Perhaps better said, style is art descended into a more unique particular. Perhaps we could say that fashion is a still further descent so fleeting that we need not concern ourselves with it and rightly we do not.

[Gido]

Beauty is a virtue and in the strict sense of the word, never practical or useful such as the skills of cooking or sheltering from the elements.

what about spreading the genes?

Art is a particular manifestation of beauty as are music and literature. As such and by defination it can not be ugly.

i have to disagree. art can be things that are not beautiful, in some ways it can even be the contrary, and still be great art.

[NJS]

Beauty is a virtue and in the strict sense of the word, never practical or useful such as the skills of cooking or sheltering from the elements.

what about spreading the genes?

Art is a particular manifestation of beauty as are music and literature. As such and by defination it can not be ugly.

i have to disagree. art can be things that are not beautiful, in some ways it can even be the contrary, and still be great art.

First point - beauty has many forms; largely divided into the natural and the contrived. I cannot see how physical, human beauty can be considered a 'virtue', since it does not earn the right and, of course, physical human beauty is an incentive to propagation of the species and, therefore, essentially practical.

Second point: music and literature are arts and it is not difficult to find ugly examples: 'Mein Kampf'; the nastier works of Aleister Crowley; for graphic art there is Tracy Emin's fouled bed at the Tate, or Damian Hirst's preserved dead cow and calf: yuk! Moreover, I find the work of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon to be ugly but I wouldn't say 'no' to a gift of one - and put it straight up for auction: the best and a very practical thing to do with their art, so far as I am concerned, even though I do not have a right to say that they are not art. I suppose the point is that art should acknowledge ugliness as much as it celebrates beauty.

The problem with the modern world, it seems to me, is that it seems increasingly to celebrate ugliness: the cacophonous; the clashing; the dissonant, and the discordant. This is reflected in the slovenliness of the dress of the Great Unwashed - they can't be bothered to dress well and they elevate their whims to the status of 'originality': kicking over the traces and 'giving the finger' to accepted norms of behaviour and dress becomes (allegedly) 'virtuous'. I am not on about 'dress codes' (such as 'when brown shoes?' etc. etc.) but wearing tee shirts and jeans to a 'black tie' occasion or wearing swimming trunks in the supermarket.
NJS