Works of Art Always Have to Be Visually Pleasing?
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Question of the Month
What is Art? and/or What is Beauty?
The following answers to this artful question each win a random book.
Art is something we do, a verb. Fine art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, just it is fifty-fifty more than personal than that: it's about sharing the way we experience the globe, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the communication of intimate concepts that cannot be faithfully portrayed by words alone. And because words alone are non enough, we must find some other vehicle to carry our intent. Only the content that nosotros instill on or in our chosen media is not in itself the art. Art is to be found in how the media is used, the way in which the content is expressed.
What then is dazzler? Beauty is much more than than cosmetic: it is not about prettiness. In that location are plenty of pretty pictures bachelor at the neighborhood home furnishing store; but these we might non refer to as cute; and it is not difficult to notice works of creative expression that we might agree are cute that are not necessarily pretty. Beauty is rather a measure of affect, a mensurate of emotion. In the context of art, beauty is the gauge of successful communication between participants – the conveyance of a concept between the artist and the perceiver. Cute art is successful in portraying the creative person's nearly profound intended emotions, the desired concepts, whether they be pretty and bright, or dark and sinister. But neither the artist nor the observer can be certain of successful communication in the end. So beauty in fine art is eternally subjective.
Wm. Joseph Nieters, Lake Ozark, Missouri
Works of art may elicit a sense of wonder or cynicism, hope or despair, admiration or spite; the work of art may be straight or circuitous, subtle or explicit, intelligible or obscure; and the subjects and approaches to the creation of art are bounded only past the imagination of the artist. Consequently, I believe that defining art based upon its content is a doomed enterprise.
Now a theme in aesthetics, the written report of art, is the claim that there is a disengagement or distance between works of art and the flow of everyday life. Thus, works of fine art rise like islands from a current of more pragmatic concerns. When you pace out of a river and onto an island, you've reached your destination. Similarly, the aesthetic attitude requires you to treat artistic feel equally an finish-in-itself: fine art asks us to arrive empty of preconceptions and attend to the fashion in which we feel the work of art. And although a person can take an 'aesthetic experience' of a natural scene, flavor or texture, art is different in that it is produced. Therefore, art is the intentional communication of an feel equally an finish-in-itself. The content of that experience in its cultural context may determine whether the artwork is popular or ridiculed, pregnant or niggling, but it is art either way.
Ane of the initial reactions to this arroyo may be that it seems overly wide. An older brother who sneaks up behind his younger sibling and shouts "Booo!" can be said to be creating art. Simply isn't the difference between this and a Freddy Krueger pic just 1 of caste? On the other paw, my definition would exclude graphics used in advertising or political propaganda, as they are created as a means to an finish and not for their own sakes. Furthermore, 'communication' is not the best word for what I take in mind considering it implies an unwarranted intention about the content represented. Aesthetic responses are ofttimes underdetermined past the artist's intentions.
Mike Mallory, Everett, WA
The fundamental difference between art and beauty is that fine art is about who has produced it, whereas beauty depends on who's looking.
Of course there are standards of beauty – that which is seen as 'traditionally' beautiful. The game changers – the square pegs, and so to speak – are those who saw traditional standards of beauty and decided specifically to become against them, perhaps just to testify a signal. Have Picasso, Munch, Schoenberg, to name but iii. They have made a stand against these norms in their art. Otherwise their art is similar all other art: its simply role is to be experienced, appraised, and understood (or not).
Art is a means to country an opinion or a feeling, or else to create a unlike view of the world, whether it be inspired by the piece of work of other people or something invented that's entirely new. Beauty is whatever aspect of that or anything else that makes an individual experience positive or grateful. Beauty lone is not art, but art tin be made of, nearly or for beautiful things. Dazzler can be found in a snowy mount scene: fine art is the photo of it shown to family, the oil interpretation of it hung in a gallery, or the music score recreating the scene in crotchets and quavers.
However, art is not necessarily positive: information technology tin be deliberately hurtful or displeasing: it can make you retrieve about or consider things that you would rather non. But if it evokes an emotion in yous, then information technology is fine art.
Chiara Leonardi, Reading, Berks
Art is a way of grasping the world. Not merely the physical world, which is what science attempts to exercise; but the whole world, and specifically, the homo world, the world of gild and spiritual experience.
Art emerged around fifty,000 years ago, long before cities and civilisation, withal in forms to which we can still directly chronicle. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves, which and so startled Picasso, have been carbon-dated at around 17,000 years former. Now, following the invention of photography and the devastating assault made past Duchamp on the self-appointed Art Establishment [run into Brief Lives this upshot], fine art cannot exist but defined on the basis of concrete tests similar 'fidelity of representation' or vague abstruse concepts like 'beauty'. So how can we define art in terms applying to both cave-dwellers and modern city sophisticates? To do this we demand to inquire: What does art do? And the answer is surely that it provokes an emotional, rather than a merely cerebral response. I way of approaching the problem of defining fine art, then, could exist to say: Art consists of shareable ideas that have a shareable emotional bear on. Art need not produce beautiful objects or events, since a keen slice of art could validly arouse emotions other than those angry past beauty, such as terror, anxiety, or laughter. Yet to derive an acceptable philosophical theory of art from this agreement means tackling the concept of 'emotion' caput on, and philosophers have been notoriously reluctant to do this. But not all of them: Robert Solomon's book The Passions (1993) has made an fantabulous start, and this seems to me to be the way to become.
It won't be piece of cake. Poor former Richard Rorty was jumped on from a very great height when all he said was that literature, poetry, patriotism, dear and stuff like that were philosophically important. Fine art is vitally important to maintaining broad standards in culture. Its pedigree long predates philosophy, which is only 3,000 years old, and scientific discipline, which is a mere 500 years quondam. Art deserves much more attention from philosophers.
Alistair MacFarlane, Gwynedd
Some years ago I went looking for art. To begin my journey I went to an fine art gallery. At that stage fine art to me was any I establish in an fine art gallery. I constitute paintings, mostly, and considering they were in the gallery I recognised them every bit art. A item Rothko painting was one colour and large. I observed a further piece that did not have an obvious characterization. It was also of ane colour – white – and gigantically large, occupying one complete wall of the very high and spacious room and continuing on small roller wheels. On closer inspection I saw that it was a moveable wall, not a piece of art. Why could one slice of piece of work be considered 'fine art' and the other not?
The answer to the question could, perhaps, be establish in the criteria of Berys Gaut to determine if some artefact is, indeed, art – that art pieces role merely as pieces of art, just every bit their creators intended.
But were they cute? Did they evoke an emotional response in me? Beauty is frequently associated with art. There is sometimes an expectation of encountering a 'cute' object when going to see a piece of work of art, be it painting, sculpture, volume or performance. Of class, that expectation quickly changes as 1 widens the range of installations encountered. The archetype instance is Duchamp's Fountain (1917), a rather un-beautiful urinal.
Tin can we define beauty? Let me endeavour by suggesting that dazzler is the capacity of an artefact to evoke a pleasurable emotional response. This might exist categorised every bit the 'like' response.
I definitely did non like Fountain at the initial level of appreciation. There was skill, of course, in its structure. Simply what was the skill in its presentation as fine art?
So I began to accomplish a definition of art. A work of art is that which asks a question which a non-art object such every bit a wall does not: What am I? What am I communicating? The responses, both of the creator artist and of the recipient audience, vary, only they invariably involve a judgement, a response to the invitation to answer. The answer, as well, goes towards deciphering that deeper question – the 'Who am I?' which goes towards defining humanity.
Neil Hallinan, Maynooth, Co. Kildare
'Art' is where we make meaning across language. Art consists in the making of meaning through intelligent agency, eliciting an aesthetic response. It's a means of communication where language is not sufficient to explain or describe its content. Art can return visible and known what was previously unspoken. Because what art expresses and evokes is in part ineffable, we find it difficult to define and delineate it. It is known through the experience of the audience as well every bit the intention and expression of the artist. The pregnant is made by all the participants, and so tin can never exist fully known. Information technology is multifarious and on-going. Even a disagreement is a tension which is itself an expression of something.
Fine art drives the development of a civilisation, both supporting the establishment and likewise preventing destructive messages from beingness silenced – art leads, mirrors and reveals modify in politics and morality. Art plays a central role in the creation of culture, and is an outpouring of thought and ideas from it, and and so it cannot be fully understood in isolation from its context. Paradoxically, however, fine art tin can communicate beyond linguistic communication and fourth dimension, appealing to our mutual humanity and linking disparate communities. Perhaps if wider audiences engaged with a greater variety of the world's artistic traditions information technology could engender increased tolerance and mutual respect.
Another inescapable facet of art is that it is a commodity. This fact feeds the creative process, whether motivating the artist to form an detail of budgetary value, or to avoid creating 1, or to artistically commodify the aesthetic experience. The commodification of art as well affects who is considered qualified to create art, comment on it, and even define it, every bit those who benefit most strive to keep the value of 'art objects' loftier. These influences must feed into a civilisation's understanding of what art is at any fourth dimension, making thoughts about fine art culturally dependent. All the same, this commodification and the consequent closely-guarded role of the art critic also gives rise to a counter culture within art civilization, frequently expressed through the creation of art that cannot be sold. The stratification of fine art by value and the resultant tension also adds to its meaning, and the meaning of fine art to society.
Catherine Bosley, Monk Soham, Suffolk
First of all we must recognize the obvious. 'Art' is a word, and words and concepts are organic and change their meaning through time. And then in the olden days, fine art meant craft. It was something you could excel at through do and hard piece of work. Y'all learnt how to paint or sculpt, and you learnt the special symbolism of your era. Through Romanticism and the nascency of individualism, art came to hateful originality. To do something new and never-heard-of defined the creative person. His or her personality became substantially as important as the artwork itself. During the era of Modernism, the search for originality led artists to reevaluate art. What could art do? What could information technology represent? Could you paint motion (Cubism, Futurism)? Could you pigment the non-cloth (Abstract Expressionism)? Fundamentally: could anything exist regarded as art? A way of trying to solve this trouble was to wait across the work itself, and focus on the fine art earth: art was that which the institution of art – artists, critics, fine art historians, etc – was prepared to regard as art, and which was made public through the institution, east.g. galleries. That'south Institutionalism – fabricated famous through Marcel Duchamp'south ready-mades.
Institutionalism has been the prevailing notion through the later role of the twentieth century, at least in academia, and I would say it still holds a business firm grip on our conceptions. One case is the Swedish artist Anna Odell. Her motion-picture show sequence Unknown woman 2009-349701, for which she faked psychosis to exist admitted to a psychiatric hospital, was widely debated, and by many was non regarded as fine art. Simply because it was debated by the art globe, it succeeded in breaking into the fine art globe, and is today regarded every bit art, and Odell is regarded an creative person.
Of form at that place are those who endeavour and break out of this hegemony, for case by refusing to play by the fine art earth's unwritten rules. Andy Warhol with his Factory was one, even though he is today totally embraced by the art world. Another example is Damien Hirst, who, much like Warhol, pays people to create the physical manifestations of his ideas. He doesn't use galleries and other art globe-approved arenas to advertise, and instead sells his objects directly to private individuals. This liberal approach to capitalism is one way of attacking the hegemony of the art world.
What does all this teach united states of america about art? Probably that art is a fleeting and chimeric concept. We will always have art, but for the most function we will only really learn in hindsight what the art of our era was.
Tommy Törnsten, Linköping, Sweden
Art periods such as Classical, Byzantine, neo-Classical, Romantic, Modern and post-Mod reflect the irresolute nature of art in social and cultural contexts; and shifting values are evident in varying content, forms and styles. These changes are encompassed, more than or less in sequence, by Imitationalist, Emotionalist, Expressivist, Formalist and Institutionalist theories of art. In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), Arthur Danto claims a distinctiveness for art that inextricably links its instances with acts of ascertainment, without which all that could exist are 'fabric counterparts' or 'mere real things' rather than artworks. Still the competing theories, works of art can be seen to possess 'family resemblances' or 'strands of resemblance' linking very different instances as art. Identifying instances of fine art is relatively straightforward, but a definition of fine art that includes all possible cases is elusive. Consequently, art has been claimed to be an 'open' concept.
According to Raymond Williams' Keywords (1976), capitalised 'Fine art' appears in general employ in the nineteenth century, with 'Art'; whereas 'art' has a history of previous applications, such as in music, poetry, comedy, tragedy and trip the light fantastic toe; and we should also mention literature, media arts, fifty-fifty gardening, which for David Cooper in A Philosophy of Gardens (2006) can provide "epiphanies of co-dependence". Art, and then, is perhaps "anything presented for our aesthetic contemplation" – a phrase coined by John Davies, former tutor at the Schoolhouse of Art Education, Birmingham, in 1971 – although 'anything' may seem besides inclusive. Gaining our artful interest is at least a necessary requirement of art. Sufficiency for something to be art requires significance to fine art appreciators which endures as long as tokens or types of the artwork persist. Paradoxically, such significance is sometimes attributed to objects neither intended equally fine art, nor peculiarly intended to be perceived aesthetically – for example, votive, devotional, commemorative or utilitarian artefacts. Furthermore, aesthetic interests can be eclipsed by dubious investment practices and social kudos. When combined with glory and harmful forms of narcissism, they can egregiously affect artistic authenticity. These interests can be overriding, and spawn products masquerading equally fine art. And then information technology's up to discerning observers to spot whatsoever Fads, Fakes and Fantasies (Sjoerd Hannema, 1970).
Colin Brookes, Loughborough, Leicestershire
For me art is nothing more and nothing less than the creative power of individuals to express their agreement of some aspect of individual or public life, similar love, conflict, fear, or pain. Every bit I read a war poem by Edward Thomas, savour a Mozart piano concerto, or contemplate a M.C. Escher drawing, I am often emotionally inspired by the moment and intellectually stimulated by the thought-procedure that follows. At this moment of discovery I humbly realize my views may be those shared by thousands, even millions across the globe. This is due in large role to the mass media'south power to command and exploit our emotions. The commercial success of a performance or production becomes the metric by which art is now nigh exclusively gauged: quality in art has been sadly reduced to equating great art with sale of books, number of views, or the downloading of recordings. Likewise bad if personal sensibilities almost a detail slice of art are lost in the greater rush for firsthand credence.
And so where does that leave the subjective notion that beauty can withal be found in art? If beauty is the effect of a procedure by which fine art gives pleasance to our senses, so it should remain a thing of personal discernment, even if outside forces clamour to take command of it. In other words, nobody, including the art critic, should be able to tell the individual what is beautiful and what is non. The world of art is one of a constant tension between preserving individual tastes and promoting pop credence.
Ian Malcomson, Victoria, British Columbia
What we perceive as beautiful does non offend the states on any level. It is a personal judgement, a subjective opinion. A memory from once we gazed upon something beautiful, a sight ever and so pleasing to the senses or to the eye, oft fourth dimension stays with the states forever. I shall never forget walking into Balzac's firm in France: the olfactory property of lilies was then overwhelming that I had a numinous moment. The intensity of the emotion evoked may not be possible to explain. I don't feel it's important to debate why I recall a flower, painting, sunset or how the light streaming through a stained-glass window is beautiful. The power of the sights create an emotional reaction in me. I don't look or business organization myself that others will hold with me or not. Tin can all agree that an act of kindness is cute?
A thing of beauty is a whole; elements coming together making information technology so. A unmarried castor stroke of a painting does non lone create the impact of beauty, merely all together, it becomes beautiful. A perfect flower is beautiful, when all of the petals together form its perfection; a pleasant, intoxicating scent is also function of the beauty.
In thinking about the question, 'What is beauty?', I've simply come abroad with the idea that I am the beholder whose center information technology is in. Suffice information technology to say, my individual assessment of what strikes me as beautiful is all I need to know.
Cheryl Anderson, Kenilworth, Illinois
Stendhal said, "Beauty is the hope of happiness", but this didn't get to the heart of the matter. Whose beauty are we talking almost? Whose happiness?
Consider if a snake made art. What would information technology believe to be beautiful? What would it deign to make? Snakes have poor eyesight and find the world largely through a chemosensory organ, the Jacobson'south organ, or through rut-sensing pits. Would a movie in its human form even make sense to a snake? So their art, their beauty, would exist entirely alien to ours: information technology would not be visual, and even if they had songs they would be foreign; later all, snakes do non accept ears, they sense vibrations. Then fine art would be sensed, and songs would be felt, if it is even possible to conceive that idea.
From this perspective – a view low to the ground – we can see that beauty is truly in the middle of the beholder. It may cross our lips to speak of the nature of dazzler in billowy language, but we do and so entirely with a forked tongue if we do and then seriously. The aesthetics of representing beauty ought not to fool usa into thinking dazzler, as some abstract concept, truly exists. It requires a viewer and a context, and the value we place on certain combinations of colors or sounds over others speaks of nothing more preference. Our want for pictures, moving or otherwise, is because our organs developed in such a manner. A snake would have no utilize for the visual world.
I am thankful to have human being art over serpent fine art, simply I would no doubtfulness be amazed at serpentine art. It would require an intellectual sloughing of many conceptions we take for granted. For that, because the possibility of this extreme thought is worthwhile: if snakes could write poesy, what would it be?
Derek Halm, Portland, Oregon
[A: Sssibilance and sussssuration – Ed.]
The questions, 'What is art?' and 'What is beauty?' are unlike types and shouldn't be conflated.
With deadening predictability, almost all contemporary discussers of art lapse into a 'relative-off', whereby they go to annoying lengths to demonstrate how open up-minded they are and how ineluctably loose the concept of fine art is. If art is simply any you want information technology to exist, tin can nosotros non just cease the conversation there? It'southward a done deal. I'll throw playdough on to a canvass, and we tin can pretend to display our modern credentials of acceptance and insight. This only doesn't work, and we all know it. If fine art is to mean anything, there has to be some working definition of what it is. If art tin be anything to anybody at anytime, then there ends the word. What makes art special – and worth discussing – is that it stands to a higher place or outside everyday things, such as everyday nutrient, paintwork, or sounds. Art comprises special or exceptional dishes, paintings, and music.
So what, and then, is my definition of art? Briefly, I believe there must be at least two considerations to label something as 'art'. The first is that there must exist something recognizable in the way of 'author-to-audition reception'. I mean to say, there must exist the recognition that something was made for an audience of some kind to receive, discuss or enjoy. Implicit in this betoken is the evident recognizability of what the art really is – in other words, the author doesn't have to tell y'all it's art when you otherwise wouldn't have whatever idea. The 2d betoken is simply the recognition of skill: some obvious skill has to be involved in making art. This, in my view, would be the minimum requirements – or definition – of fine art. Even if yous disagree with the particulars, some definition is required to brand anything at all art. Otherwise, what are we fifty-fifty discussing? I'k breaking the mold and ask for contumely tacks.
Brannon McConkey, Tennessee
Author of Student of Life: Why Becoming Engaged in Life, Fine art, and Philosophy Can Atomic number 82 to a Happier Beingness
Man beings announced to have a compulsion to categorize, to organize and define. We seek to impose society on a welter of sense-impressions and memories, seeing regularities and patterns in repetitions and associations, always on the lookout for correlations, eager to determine cause and event, then that we might requite sense to what might otherwise seem random and inconsequential. Still, particularly in the final century, we have also learned to take pleasure in the reflection of unstructured perceptions; our creative ways of seeing and listening have expanded to encompass disharmony and irregularity. This has meant that culturally, an ever-widening gap has grown betwixt the attitudes and opinions of the majority, who continue to define fine art in traditional ways, having to do with gild, harmony, representation; and the minority, who expect for originality, who endeavour to see the globe anew, and strive for difference, and whose critical practise is rooted in brainchild. In between in that location are many who abjure both extremes, and who both find and give pleasure both in defining a personal vision and in practising craftsmanship.
At that place will always exist a challenge to traditional concepts of art from the shock of the new, and tensions around the appropriateness of our understanding. That is how things should be, equally innovators push at the boundaries. At the aforementioned time, we volition continue to take pleasure in the beauty of a mathematical equation, a finely-tuned machine, a successful scientific experiment, the engineering science of landing a probe on a comet, an accomplished poem, a hit portrait, the sound-world of a symphony. Nosotros apportion significance and meaning to what we find of value and wish to share with our fellows. Our art and our definitions of beauty reflect our human nature and the multiplicity of our artistic efforts.
In the terminate, because of our individuality and our varied histories and traditions, our debates will always be inconclusive. If nosotros are wise, nosotros will look and listen with an open up spirit, and sometimes with a wry smile, ever celebrating the diversity of man imaginings and achievements.
David Howard, Church Stretton, Shropshire
Next Question of the Month
The next question is: What's The More than Important: Freedom, Justice, Happiness, Truth? Please give and justify your rankings in less than 400 words. The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain. Subject area lines should be marked 'Question of the Month', and must exist received by 11th August. If you want a chance of getting a book, please include your physical accost. Submission is permission to reproduce your reply physically and electronically.
Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/What_is_Art_and_or_What_is_Beauty
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