Musings on Dickie

I believe that Dickie makes a valid idea conception by proposing that the artworld should only allow certain people into it because no everyone is an artist or a creative person (even though human beings are inherently creative). And Dickie also relates an inner circle of the artworld which is more selective and I think it is in this place where the sincerity lies. Even though Robert Louis Stevenson completed Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde in approximately six days, he would still be in that inner circle because of his sincerity to his art. He was most definitely passionate about his art form. As said in class, content is not relative to form in this sense. If the art form is completely sincere, it does not matter how little time or how long it takes.

However, many people of the post-modern age get grouped into this inner circle, I think, without justification. One simply has to be an artist and one is sincere. But the artworld and art and literature do not work that way in general. One cannot simply be an artist and be included in the sincere vision of the artworld. I think combining Leo Tolstoy's theory with Dickie's makes for a very good philosophy about who is an artist and what is art.