I think we would have to define what "art" means in terms of competitive figure skating and something for skaters to aim at.
Right now the sport is not using the same definitions that art school would use. Nor, probably, should they. They can learn from aesthetic theory as studied in art school, so I think it is worth injecting into discussion of figure skating. But not for the purposes of arguing that figure skating has failed at something it hasn't been actively trying to achieve.
We can talk about how the PCS criteria could be written better, how judges and coaches/choreographers could be better trained to understand principles of aesthetics so that skaters can be trained and programs can be planned to try to better meet art school definitions of art.
We could also talk about how requirements or optional rewards for technical skills could be planned in different ways to encourage more consideration of aesethetic impact in designing programs and training skaters.
But we should also consider what the purposes of a competitive short or long program should be, and how that might differ from the purposes of a skating performance in a strictly artistic non-competitive context.
Agreed.
I'm going to start a thread designed to elicit a small experiment in this direction. However, even so the sample size will be too small to reach firm conclusions that one judging system is inherently more supportive/demanding of artistry than another.
Maybe the problem with CoP is that it went straight into the difficulty deep end. Instead of gradual attempts to get skaters to do more challenging spins/footwork, they've added in requirements that make elements look laboured and not as aesthetic for the majority of skaters who can't achieve that fine balance between difficult and beautiful. [/quote]
In many cases -- perhaps with the exception of variety/complexity feature in step sequences, or the inclusion of axels, and certain kinds of spins in free skates -- the demands for difficulty are not official requirements. There's no rule that requires skaters to achieve level 2, 3, or 4 in steps and spins or to include their maximum possible jump content with as much as possible after the halfway point in the program.
De facto, of course, that's the way to earn more points in the Technical Elements Score. And the decisions of the technical panels are more clearcut, less subjective -- either the skater achieved the feature or rotated the jump or she did not, with a few gray areas in borderline cases -- than the judges' more qualitative opinionated scoring, so skaters soon learned to aim for higher base values with less attention to quality of execution or to program construction.
The rewards for quality and for well-choreographed programs are built in to the system as well. If competitive figure skating really wanted to promote itself more as art and less as sport, it could tweak the GOE and PCS values and train the judges to make those scores more determinant of final results and more clearly based on agreed-upon aesthetic principles.
I've always preferred more complex programs to the simple and grand. E.g., I always got bored as soon as a pair started a death spiral that would be held in the same position for several seconds and felt the urge to leave the room for a fridge break. But that's a matter of personal preference. Really, in my mind the ideal would be variety including both simple and complex moves/combinations, executed with good quality, intentionality, and connection to the musical phrasing. And the rules as currently written do encourage judges to reward those qualities. But there are enough other written criteria as well that judges may not always make those the priority, in case some skaters excel in other areas.
