Nicholas Wolterstorff | Rethinking Art 

Gombrich was not German but Austrain. He was born and raised in Vienna and came to England in 1936 to escape the Nazis. He remained in England for the rest of his life where he worked at the newly relocated Warburg Institute which was originally located in Hamburg that became part of London University

The labour unions of the last 85 years have always had work songs that were like fight songs akin to Marching band songs that were fight songs. Even hype music tgat promotes things that are not Wirth promoting like a football team have some artistry to its Lyrical content and evocative sense solidarity to unify a community. Who can forget tge fight songs for Notre Dane and Universuty if Michigan.

Lost me at: > Holobunga art

Aesthetics are the result of a raft of social functions that art performs for people. The aesthetics becomes more prominent over time when future generations no long understand what those functions are. Eventually contemporary artists produce nonsense objects that look like art, but no longer perform those functions, but a new set of functions that allow people with no talent whatsoever to declare themselves artists. This is the primary function of contemporary art. Contemporary art is also for the rich, for collectors, for those who need to see art as something that elite people contemplate. Bereft of functions one can philosophize about art endlessly without anyone really challenging the system that allows for the nonsense to exist. All is subjective and subjectivity protects the artists, the critics, the museum directors and the professors from real criticism, and really needing to know anything about art, because, after all, the history of art is actually very complicated. Today it is mostly popular art that performs all the traditional functions of art, and they are the same functions that have existed for thousands of years: Beautification, Mimesis, Persuasion and Conviction, and Telling Stories. Each of these categories has many sub-functions. My favourite is Creating Feelings of Plenty. From the cave paintings to your fridge, creating feelings of plenty is one of the most obvious and repeated functions of art. Anyway, I could go on and on, but just to say, the discussion of art needn't be so lofty, philosophical, esoteric or abstruse. Every culture around the world performs these basic functions and has been doing so for thousands of years. The trouble is the functions are so basic and practical that when you point them out to artists and professors (even art historians), they simply scoff at them. Which in the end simply points out that they don't actually know anything about art and don't want to.

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