I have been asked why I don’t write about music or some other creative discipline. The name of this column seems to have posed a problem for some as I have been writing exclusively about visual art.
Since around the 16th century, the term ‘art’ technically has referred to things made by human hands which are to be appreciated primarily for their beauty (relative as beauty is) and which possess an emotional or intellectual presence. These things have traditionally been visual in nature and thus the term referred to painting, sculpture, and architecture; the so-called fine arts. Drawing was excluded as it was traditionally undertaken as a foundation of training and as a preparatory stage in the production process. Thus, it was not seen as a means to an end and worthy of being a distinct discipline of art.
Much later, the term with some ideological permutations was also inclusive of photography, some ceramics, and some textiles. Now in more recent times, with the profound questioning of art from within the institutions – schools, galleries, artists, and critics – the term is also a referent to some forms of ‘sound-expression’, some performances, some events, qualifying film/video, and drawing. Contemporarily also, the term ‘art’ no longer denotes beauty and beauty has ceased to be a defining characteristic of art.