What is Art and how do we judge the value of it?

In relation to the topic of Facilitating Investigations into Historical, Cultural and Social Contexts in the Carroll book, I read an article in World Archaeology titled "Art and the Archaeologist." Written by Sarah Scott, this article discusses how we place more value on certain art forms and less on others, asking the question "How do we judge the value of Art?" In addition to relating to our readings in the Carroll book, this article also contradicts the Kamhi article by providing contrasting definitions of "art."

When archaeologists think of ancient art, they think of sculptures, vases, paintings, mosaics etc., but it is important to keep in mind that by displaying and interpreting these art forms we are placing them into an artificial category that has more to do with the development of modern art history and aesthetics, and not with the contexts for which these objects were originally created. Scott discusses the fact that in order to understand how these pieces of material culture have become art in our modern world, we need to "reflect on the history of their discovery and interpretation." To me, this is very similar to us, as viewers, decoding and deconstructing works of art in order to discover their true meaning; this also means, that what Scott suggests is completely opposite of the claims Kamhi makes in her article on Visual Culture Studies.

The notion of art as an original creation, produced by a talented or gifted individual is a recent development, but in my opinion is as good a definition as any, and because I agree with that statement I have a hard time understanding how we can value one piece of art over another. For example, classical Greek sculpture and pottery has always been the priority of most museums and considered art rather than archaeology, leading to the marginalization of other types of material sculpture. Art of later periods or from 'peripheral' regions was, and still is, thought of as degenerate or lacking in taste, especially Non-Western art, such as African or Native American art, but even Roman art and sculpture was seen as inferior because Greek art was thought to be the "apex of human artistic achievement." While Kahmi most likely would have considered both Greek and Roman sculpture to be "fine art," she would have considered most works of material culture to simply be artifacts or crafts.

It is through the decoding and deconstruction, that Kamhi believes to be so negative and unnecessary, along with learning about the cultures that created these works that will enable us to discover their true meaning and value as works of art. Just as suggested in the Carroll text, we as art teachers must emphasize the values and beliefs of a society or group, no matter how "primitive" or "modern," and that learning why they created certain pieces and the steps and techniques they used will also help us to find meaning and value in their works of art.