Contributors
Donald Brook
Dr Donald Brook is Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts at Flinders University. He is the Founder, in 1975, of the Experimental Art Foundation.
Articles
![0.348](/images/articles/cards/3829.jpg)
![](/images/articles/cards/2342 Artlink_SM_square_blk-A1gsb699zvug0t.png)
A further instalment in the memoirs of Australia's most revered art theorist Donald Brook. Yes, he is still alive.
![1.3325](/images/articles/cards/3401.jpg)
![0.938](/images/articles/cards/3326.jpg)
![1.33](/images/articles/cards/3117.jpg)
![](/images/articles/cards/2342 Artlink_SM_square_orng-A1u2igv4uayz4g.png)
Art theorist and Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts, Flinders University, Donald Brook examines the art world and its strange ways. Art, he says, is not craft nor the consequence of any exercise of skill at all but the artworld is infallible in identifying art.
![1.114](/images/articles/cards/2884.jpg)
![0.8](/images/articles/cards/2725.jpg)
![](/images/articles/cards/2345 Artlink instagram_v1d.png)
Brook breaks this argument down into sub categories: The rationale of the art history museum, The cabinet of curiosities, Evolution, Cultural evolution, Art as the source of memetic variation and The cultural museum.
![0.8](/images/articles/cards/2610.jpg)
![](/images/articles/cards/2342 Artlink_SM_square_red-A1kh3z5jbn1iii.png)
In this part 1, the viability of the subject called Art History is challenged, using the terms art and work of art in a conventional way. The nature of histories as they are ascribed to kinds, especially art as a kindcultural kinds, the problems associated with generalisations and the dilemma for the Macho art historianare ideas addressed through this text.
![](/images/articles/cards/2342 Artlink_SM_square_blue-A1t160f3co9atw.png)
In Part I (Artlink, December 2001) the subject called Art History was challenged, using the terms art and work of art in a conventional way. Here in Part II it is argued that some of the woes of art theory can be alleviated by understanding these terms in a different way. Brook discusses the role of cultural memes in creating different kinds of historiesand the doctrine of creativity. He here concludes that it is perfectly understandable that, as metaphysical explorers, we may address works of art with little or no respect for the author's intentions. In the end, he states, it depends upon the regularities of the real world.
![0.854](/images/articles/cards/2097.jpg)
![](/images/articles/cards/2342 Artlink_SM_square_yllw-A1klk47n8sjlry.png)
Founded as recently as 1888 the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Wharfedale was by reputation the biggest madhouse in Western Europe, and Brooks small village lay huddled beside it. Brook tells the story of living in sin, celebacy and the wall that proposed a division between madness and sanity.
![](/images/articles/cards/2342 Artlink_SM_square_blk-A1cil7jfa6fpce.png)
"So the question raised for art theory is this....Is a physical autographic sculpture - a Brancusi woodcarving for example - only an 'instantiation'(albeit rather a privileged one) of some imperceptible, intentional object that is the 'real' sculpture? Are sculptures more literally than metaphorically - 'poetry in stone'? Are they in a word 'texts' whose proper reading (as we are told) had best be undertaken in French?"