Martin Heidegger crafts an argument around what amounts to “which came first the chicken or the egg.” You can't have an egg without a chicken and so on. Heidegger makes what I consider an equally impressive (a little sarcasm) argument saying “what is meant by the word (art) could exist only on the basis of the actuality of works and artist. Or is the converse the case? Do works and artists only exist as their origin?” This whole concept is totally made from straw.
I drew a picture just today. Now suppose it could be considered art. Does Heidegger mean to tell me that the picture was art, therefore I drew it? He calls it circular and says that anyone can see it. That I can agree on, but the rest of his article had little else that I could see. Heidegger almost turned the tables on me (again sarcasm) when he pointed out that art was “thingly.” At that point I gave up, as far as looking for enlightenment, and could pretty read the remainder of the article with an eye toward finding any tidbit substantive information.
I'm sorry if this offends, but judging from this article, I think I could understand art better than he. It works like this: art exist because we are creative, the more creative we are, or are allowed to be, the better the art which is produced. Even Hans-Georg Gadamer could pretty much reason that we are creative and animals are not. If you look in a cows stall you will see that they produce stuff, but art is not to be found. Art is greater than the some of its parts in fact it plainly is a creation, it is new, and it is unique.
The one phrase that Heideger uses that I find entirely applicable is “that question of the origin of the work of art becomes a question about the nature of art.” But it doesn't follow in my mind that there is a question about “how art in general exists,” duh.
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