Wednesday, 6 July 2011

Dutton's cross-cultural cluster criteria for art


  1. Direct pleasure - valued as a source of immediate experience
  2. Skill and Virtuosity - demonstrates specialized skills
  3. Style - made according to rules of form, composition and expression (while usually allowing or  celebrating departures)
  4. Novelty or Creativity - Valued and praised for originality.  Kitsch and craft use the style in an uncreative way.
  5. Criticism - artistic forms exist with parallel discourses of appreciation and judgement.
  6. Representation - In wildly varying degrees of naturalism, art objects represent real or imaginary experiences of the world.
  7. Special focus - art is bracketed off from ordinary life, "made special" by location, time,appurtenance, rituals, e.g. art gallery, opening, picture frame.
  8. Expressive individuality - potential to express individual personality through the work.
  9. Emotional saturation - not only the emotion of the content but the emotional tone of the work or performance.
  10. Intellectual challenge - utilize the combined variety of perceptual and intellectual capacities at a high level.
  11. Art traditions and institutions - works of art gain value from positions in the history of their traditions.
  12. Imaginative experience - (most importantly) artworks provide an imaginative experience for their makers and their audience.
Not all artwork will have all characteristics but they will generally show most.

    from Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct

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