Book Review: The Invention of Art: A Cultural History(2001) by Larry Shiner

 Book Review: 

The Invention of Art: A Cultural History(2001) 

by Larry Shiner

   If you want to know the true worth of obscure academic titles- this book, published over twenty years ago- cost 30 bucks on Amazon, used, and 35 bucks, new, which shows you basically that people hold on to their copies and not many people donate them/sell them off, etc.  I could see the value before I read the book- since The Invention of Art: A Cultural History is a synthesis both of the history itself, which is semi-obscure AND the development of the theory surrounding that history, which is more obscure and took place largely outside of the United States and the English language.

  The idea of a transcendent and universal art is now going on nearly a century of being attacked from all sides.  Today, the only people left who would argue of the existence of some universal criterion of artistic merit and aesthetic beauty would perhaps be the Catholic Church and people who watch Fox News.   For everyone else, that ship has sailed but it is worth knowing the story of how we got from there to here since one of the consequences of being "here" is that people abandon all criterions of artistic merit and argue that aesthetic beauty doesn't exist, or shouldn't, or is completely subjective in which case, why bother with art at all except as a personal expression of traumatic biography.

   The Invention of Art does such a good job summarizing this history that I took my library book copy to my office, copied large portions of it and scanned in the notes and bibliography.  It's been my experience, running a record label for the past 15 years, that almost everyone in a creative endeavor considers themselves a capital A artist.  Actors, musicians, everyone.  The phenomenon of "everyone an artist" and "the culture of creatives" is intimately tied to the discussion in Shiner's book, starting in the romantic period, where the idea of the transcendent artist took root.  Originally only very specific types of artists could claim this mantle- poets were right there in the beginning.  Painters and sculptors.  Drama.  Beginning in the 18th century poetry began to expand to what we now know as "literature" though the acceptance of novels as literature was a long time coming.   Also in the 18th century music came into its own as an accepted art- this is a particularly interesting discussion, since today music is synonymous with what most people consider art.

   In fact, up until the 18th century music was a functional endeavor with musicians called to compose work for a specific occasion and such work was reused and reformatted without regard to the preservation of a specific "work."  It is the growth of this concept, that of the specific "work" that Shiner singles out as an important inflection point.  In this same sense he points out the importance of the legal significance of the passage of a copyright bill in England after which an author of a work could claim payment for the reproduction of that work by others.

  It is a fascinating topic and if you ever see a copy of this book on the shelf of a used book store for twenty bucks or less you should grab it.