Comments on: What is art? Blog Series Part II https://plato-philosophy.org/what-is-art-blog-series-part-ii/ Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:10:32 +0000 hourly 1 By: Jana https://plato-philosophy.org/what-is-art-blog-series-part-ii/#comment-12303 Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:10:32 +0000 https://www.philosophyforchildren.org/what-is-art-blog-series-part-ii/#comment-12303 Thanks for your suggestions! I will check out the video. After the students commented that a blank piece of white paper could not be art, I did hold up a blank sheet and asked the students, “What if I announced that this was a work of art I’d created and told you that I called it “Silence?” Reactions were mixed as to whether the students thought this could be art.

I’m curious about your art and philosophy club — is it an afterschool program?

]]> By: rob https://plato-philosophy.org/what-is-art-blog-series-part-ii/#comment-12304 Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:32:42 +0000 https://www.philosophyforchildren.org/what-is-art-blog-series-part-ii/#comment-12304 I really like the idea of students doing two drawings/paintings: one art; the other not! I'm going to try this with my art & philosophy club

I find Duchamp's readymades to be extremely useful in generating aesthetic questions in class(mainly with 5th grade students). Perhaps you could introduce Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning Drawing", 1953 (a video of Rauschenberg talking about this act:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpCWh3IFtDQ%5D0) in order to test / clarify their hypothesis that a blank sheet of paper could not be a work of art because "No one had worked on it" (although Rauschenberg worked very hard at erasing the drawing- which was one of de Kooning's intent in his selection)or Yves Klein's "Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility" 1959-62, the empty space of the gallery (The Void) which not only questions the nature of the art object but ownership as well.

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