The Passing of the Modern Ages

Art and ArtistryA correspondent with the insufficiently envoweled name of roystgnr has commented on TOF's post "Observation on the State of Modern Art"

I vaguely recall modern art enthusiasts once *bragging* about a double-blind study in which art students preferred modern artists' work over children's and chimps' a whopping *two thirds* of the time. Pathetic.

Or was that sympathetic? You do have to feel for visual artists in the post-photography age. Now that the mere real is more easily captured by kids with camera phones than by professional painters, apparently the only contributions remaining for the artist to make lie in the surreal... so isn't it tempting to give up on enhancing realistic images entirely and just focus on abstract composition?

This prompts TOF into an unaccustomed (cough cough) philosophical mood. 

The intellect is perfected in two ways, scientia and ars, or "science" and "art" in modern parlance.  Science was in the original sense of knowledge; and art was the application of that knowledge to something practical.  In brief: "know" and "know how."  Physicians and engineers, indeed any menial who worked with his hands, were therefore counted as artists. 

The original term was "artisan." 

"Artists in the sense that we understand and use the word, meaning practitioner of fine art, didn't exist in Leonardo's time it would be more appropriate to use the word artisan in its meaning of craftsman or skilled hand worker."

Irrational musings continue here »