Origin of Art

In "Beginning the History of Art," Davis discusses how the psychology of the artists is ultimately an important factor in defining his works of art (specifically in the case of the artist who creates Figure 1). She brings up the example of Vermeer and Fischl and their similar paintings, saying that, "Both Vermeer's Lady at a Virginal and Fischl's emerging Power of Rock and Roll are 'in' the... historical process of Fishl's painting his painting...whether or not Fishchl is consciously aware of the realtionship or overtly 'stages' it in his final resolution." Here it seems that Davis is strongly siding witht he face that the artist's psychology has nothing to do with how we view his art in the context of art history. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether he ever saw Vermeer's painting. In many ways I can see the validity of this point. Say we had never uncovered the forensic evidence that Fishcl visited the National Gallery and saw Vermeer's painting. Would the art historical evalutation of Fischl's painting remain the same, or be fundamentally altered? I like to think that regardless of mishaps or misinformation in fields totally unrelated to art history (like Fischl's travel plans), and art historian can look at two paintings and evaluate them in a way that has art historical meaning. The two finished product paintings have similar characteristics, and thus are related to each other in this way. Does it really matter whether or not the artist "meant" to? And even if he did, we can never truly know the artist's intentions. If we must base art history heavily upon evidence we can never gather (such as the exact intention behind an artist's every decision or action) then is art history even an academic study anymore? Or is it soley a subject matter of conjecture? I tend to lean toward the point of view that if we have no thorough evidence of the artist's intention outside conjecture, then we cannot draw conclusions about the art based on these intentions about which we know so little. It seems almost dishonest to use an artist's psychological intentions as a premise for an academic argument when every academic must admit that we can't know these intentions clearly or with any amout of certainty.
Later Davis acknowledges the importance of an artist's intention when she states, "Strickly speaking, depiction begins as a palmipsest of intentions, however they are to be characterized, directed at a single persisting mark." It seems that in order for a mark to be art, it depends exactly upon the intent of the artist, especially when we start to consider the case of the very first artwork, our Figure 1. Many marks must have existed before artwork, because stones get scratched and tools get worn all the times in ways that we would not consider art. Still, at one point someone must have made a mark with the intent to depict beauty, an image, or a message. There is a certain degree of deliberateness that needs to be there. So it seems that my ideas have led me to a contradiction. Art doesn't depent on an artist's intention. Art must have had a beginning, because non-art existed before art. This beginning is entirely basied on an artist's intention. There's the contradiction, so art must in part depend on an artists intent and psychological state of mind while creating the art. On the other hand, maybe it doesn't matter at all what the artist wanted to do with his marked stone. If we, as a future audience, see beauty in what this Middle Paleolithic artist did, then doesn't that make it art? Is there such a thing as accidental art?
This leads me to wonder if any of these archeologists or forensic anthropologists really did look at these stone markings nad tried to find aesthetic beauty in them. Were they just concerened with some scholarly object that we could mark as "the beginning" without any appreciation of the artwork other than forensic evaluation that it actually is art? Maybe the whole endevor is outside artwork, if we look at art as something the audience finds beauty in instead of something that hinges soley on the artist's intentions.