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There would be no sestinas - as least as a function of language rather than sound or shape - without language, so is the sestina form mind independent only if language is?

What about forms in painting? The shape someone has painted their muse exists independent of anyone seeing it (at least if paint is real), but perhaps it is not a "cubist" form independent of minds, in a similar way to if beauty is mind independent.

What about musical forms? Is this a rondo independent of anyone ever hearing etc. it?

What artistic forms are mind independent and in what way?

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Art is what we call art, but there is room to debate the definition or the 'calling' of it. It's like the famous urinal called a piece of art (which I have seen in person by the way): it raises the question, it does not answer it.

My take is that the answer must then either be a tautology (art is what we call it), or there is no answer. You decide :-)

To clarify, as I said in a comment: the idea is to break the categories. If the 20th century wasn't long enough for us to understand that this is a valid purpose for art, then we still have a lot of the 21st century left to get the memo. Defund the MVSEVMs!

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  • a fair enough answer, though duchamp may or may not have been tautologous about his urinal. personally, i absolutely think that art depends on our artistic institutions (ways of thinking), but that doesn't mean it's all trivial.
    – user67675
    Commented Sep 24, 2023 at 12:33
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    Did that famous guy discover the urinal, or invent it? On happening across it in the mvsevm, do we discover it as a piece of art, or invent (conclude) it as art? The idea, I think, was to break the categories.
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Sep 24, 2023 at 12:34
  • i'll accept your answer if no-one else intervenes. thanks.
    – user67675
    Commented Sep 24, 2023 at 12:37
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    "it [that the readymade is art] is a truism, but not a tautology"
    – user67675
    Commented Sep 24, 2023 at 12:53
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    "A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It's not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering." - Byron Katie
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Sep 24, 2023 at 13:02
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Something that I would like to raise to this question is that the fundamental appreciation of art depends on the perspective of the observer in the sense that if you had no relative context on what art is this would mean you have no distinction between a pattern of random stimuli (an accidental spilt drink on a table for example) and a deliberate act of creation (a Picasso for example) but if in the observers opinion they consider both to be works of art then in both cases the ‘creation’ of ‘art’ is 100% reliant on the stimuli being appreciated by the observer. In my opinion this shows that art is what the observer determines it to be, and so I would say that there is no art separate from the mind of the observer and also no definitive example of what art is.

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  • It is part of the reason for "music appreciation" classes, or art history for non-majors classes: with no background knowledge at all, it is hard to understand what is coming in. Some artists got frustrated with the lack of understanding and also the rigid categories and judgements and decided to make in-jokes or outright mockery. This also goes misunderstood...
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Sep 26, 2023 at 2:06
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    Interesting point, so if civilization is destroyed and in 10,000 years from now an alien species sifts through our ruins would they consider "fountain" (the ready-made pissoir) to be a form of vandalism where someone just stole a pissoir but didn't get far enough so he left it there or would they appreciate the absurdity of placing something mundane within a selection of the extraordinary as a statement? And without access to the rest of society would you even know it's mundane? And would you even know it's an exhibition of the extraordinary and not just idk a second hand shop?
    – haxor789
    Commented Sep 26, 2023 at 10:26
  • @haxor789 it would be "... a rusty mail, in monumental mockery."
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Sep 26, 2023 at 23:50
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Aesthetic properties

like balance and ugliness, may be mind independent. There's lots to read about aesthetic realism. I cannot google anything specifically on realism about form, but

A widespread answer says that aesthetic properties supervene on formal properties... “lines and colours combined in a particular way”

(I take that to also mean words combined according to e.g. their sounds - you'd call cubism a movement rather than a form, I think).

If ugliness is mind independent then presumably it cannot supervene on something that exists mind dependently (nothing can depend on the existence of something that exists only dependent on minds, without also depending on minds): aesthetic realists should be realists about form (though aesthetic realism itself faces a similar challenge from the mind dependence of appearances).

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  • confused myself a bit there.
    – user71399
    Commented Apr 6 at 8:02

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