Deborah Semel Demirtaş

I am sitting and waiting for my husband to wake up so we can have a late breakfast before he goes to work this afternoon and I go down to the Turgutreis Sevgi Yolu Sevgililer Panayır (very loosely translated to the Valentines Day Bazaar on Turgutreis’s Lover’s Lane).

While clearing up the mess in my studio (a never-ending process) and packing up some drawings to take down for my ‘discount days’ art sale at the bazaar, I came across the following text glued inside the cover of a box holding some old papers. I have no idea when I wrote this, or what I wrote it for, but I like it, and I thought I’d share it, for what it’s worth.

Aesthetics

What is Art About?
What do we look at to judge the value of a work of art?

Renaissance to Pre-Modern:

Mimetic. Art is about how it represents things.
We judge the value of a work of art by appreciating its formal qualities.
(What happens after the invention of photography?)

Modern:

Aesthetic. Art is about how it represents things.
We judge the value of a work of art by appreciating its formal qualities.
(What happens after the ‘white square’ or ‘black square’?)

Post Modern:

NOT primarily Visual. Art is about anything.
If art is about anything, how can we judge a work of art?
What kind of knowledge is necessary to judge?

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The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions to be a Work of Art

1. Be about something.
2. Embody its meaning.     (IN other words, art should give form to an idea.)

And on that note, here’s an idea 😉