Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 13:13:40 -0500
From: Reg Lilly <rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Anyone get Gass?


George Trail wrote:
> 

> 
> Art is simply that deliberate disposition of materials in time or space
> which the power structure is willing to so designate. 


	This sounds like a version of Dickie's Institutional Theory of Art, which I've
always found silly and question begging.  So something can not be art
(driftwood) and become art be becoming a "candidate for appreication" as a work
of art, the 'art authorities' being the ones who have the power to propose
legitimate candidates.  Or it's question begging, because what make the
power-structure powerful?  I've always found the discussion bent towards the
problem of defining art -- which always tried to identify some formal
(institutional) structure jejune.  Art is not just a thing, but a history, a
tradition, and that's just a beginning.  It's also a 'working' which can be
analyzed as such, as I think Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty correctly point out.

Ciao,
Reg


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