IS IT ART?
Paintings and power shovels, sonatas and submarines, dramas and dynamos -
they all have one thing in common. They are fashioned by people. They are artificial,
in contrast to everything that is natural - plants, animals, and minerals. The average
20th-century person would distinguish paintings, sonatas, and dramas as forms of
art, while viewing power shovels, submarines, and dynamos as products of
technology. This distinction, however, is a modern one that dates from an 18th-
century point of view. In earlier times, the word "art" referred to any useful skill.
Shoemaking, metalworking, medicine, agriculture, and even warfare, were all once
classified as arts. They were equated with what are today called the fine arts -
painting, sculpture, music, architecture, literature, dance, and related fields. In that
broader sense, art was defined as a skill in making or doing, based on true and
adequate reasoning.
E X E R C I S E 1: Find words or phrases in the passage which mean the same as:
Dostları ilə paylaş: