The question of art is a valid one particularly in a post modern world where the aesthetics of art is blurred by the culture that surrounds us. That is culture and its definitions are no longer top-down arguments but bottom-up. We see now that quilting is art and not a cultural artifact even if it is pleasing or interesting. Art should never make us happy, in fact the opposite, it should be disquieting. Let's take Mozart, very inventive as far as his use of the materials at hand ( the diatonic scales, that is the forms at hand), but most of his works was and still is dinner music, pleasing to the ear and makes digestion of the food and wine very palpable for the royality he was serving. As court composer that was his job, no matter how creative he was and he was surely the best at it. However his operas and his very late string quartets and maybe his very last symphony were truly into the realm of high art. Here he truly expressed himself within the context of his millieu, the Spirit(Hegelian/Kant spirit) of the ages. He connected very well with the audience he intended, their situation in life, their concerns, using music to convey their Spirit.
Let me digress a little. The Enlightenment spawned a multitude of ideas, but principly two that were monumental: democracy and capitalism. The rise of both created the rise of the middle class, the age of Beethoven and beyond. But Capitalism has its price, it was and is still not a free ride. Capitalism in its attempt to conquer nature, which it has down quite successfully, has created a lifeless middle class, because man who is part of nature too has conquered itself. This conquered nature has created our alienation (I am just as guilty as the next) from the nature that we long for. We shallowly attempt to connect again within the confinds of what we have created, Capitalism. We have become the Great Consuming world, trying to come to grips of with our alienation. Since Schoenberg (at least musically) and maybe even Mahler, the great artists regard this alienation as what they are trying to express in their music. Not everybody and everything, but it surely is the underlying idea for many of them, and they surely get their point across. And not every musical piece should or can be as pleasing as a quilt. If not then what is the point of music in general??
Let me digress a little. The Enlightenment spawned a multitude of ideas, but principly two that were monumental: democracy and capitalism. The rise of both created the rise of the middle class, the age of Beethoven and beyond. But Capitalism has its price, it was and is still not a free ride. Capitalism in its attempt to conquer nature, which it has down quite successfully, has created a lifeless middle class, because man who is part of nature too has conquered itself. This conquered nature has created our alienation (I am just as guilty as the next) from the nature that we long for. We shallowly attempt to connect again within the confinds of what we have created, Capitalism. We have become the Great Consuming world, trying to come to grips of with our alienation. Since Schoenberg (at least musically) and maybe even Mahler, the great artists regard this alienation as what they are trying to express in their music. Not everybody and everything, but it surely is the underlying idea for many of them, and they surely get their point across. And not every musical piece should or can be as pleasing as a quilt. If not then what is the point of music in general??