Art as the communication of competence
Abstract
Trends and developments/ Courants et tendancesArt as the communication of competence SAGE Publications, Inc.1973DOI: 10.1177/053901847301200604 Larry Gross i. r ocus on tne process The present paper will focus on the nature of the processes by which artistic products (objects, events, performances) are created and appreciated. I will also maintain that, in fact, the process of artistic creation itself presupposes and arises out of the process of appreciation. Artistic communication is a form of culturally determined symbolic behavior in which an artist creates or arranges object(s) and/or events, purposefully, so as to imply meaning(s) and emotion(s) according to the conventions of a symbolic code, and these object/events elicit meaningful inferences in the artist himself and/or in others who possess at least minimal competence in the same cultural mode (cf. Gross, 1973). For artistic communication to occur it is not necessary for the artist and the audience to co-exist in either time or space. However, according to this definition, it is necessary that, to a significant extent, they share a common symbolic code. The processes of aesthetic creation and appreciation bring to our attention many sensory-perceptual characteristics of objects, events and performances which we normally do not attend to. It