All Works of Art Are Beautiful and Have Something to Teach Us
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Question of the Calendar month
What is Art? and/or What is Dazzler?
The post-obit answers to this artful question each win a random volume.
Fine art is something we do, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, merely it is even more personal than that: it'southward nearly sharing the manner nosotros experience the world, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the advice of intimate concepts that cannot be faithfully portrayed by words lone. And because words alone are non enough, we must find some other vehicle to carry our intent. But the content that we instill on or in our chosen media is not in itself the art. Fine art is to be found in how the media is used, the manner in which the content is expressed.
What then is beauty? Dazzler is much more than than cosmetic: it is non nearly prettiness. At that place are enough of pretty pictures available at the neighborhood dwelling house furnishing store; merely these we might non refer to as beautiful; and information technology is non difficult to find works of artistic expression that we might concur are cute that are not necessarily pretty. Beauty is rather a measure out of affect, a measure 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. Beautiful fine art is successful in portraying the creative person'southward most profound intended emotions, the desired concepts, whether they be pretty and bright, or dark and sinister. But neither the creative person nor the observer can be certain of successful advice in the end. So dazzler in art is eternally subjective.
Wm. Joseph Nieters, Lake Ozark, Missouri
Works of art may arm-twist a sense of wonder or cynicism, hope or despair, adoration or spite; the piece of work of art may be direct or complex, subtle or explicit, intelligible or obscure; and the subjects and approaches to the creation of art are bounded only by 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 report of art, is the claim that at that place is a detachment or distance between works of art and the catamenia of everyday life. Thus, works of fine art rise like islands from a current of more pragmatic concerns. When you step out of a river and onto an isle, you've reached your destination. Similarly, the aesthetic attitude requires you to care for creative feel as an terminate-in-itself: art asks us to arrive empty of preconceptions and attend to the way in which we feel the piece of work of fine art. And although a person can have an 'aesthetic experience' of a natural scene, flavor or texture, fine art is different in that it is produced. Therefore, fine art is the intentional advice of an feel as an end-in-itself. The content of that experience in its cultural context may determine whether the artwork is popular or ridiculed, significant or trivial, but it is fine art either way.
1 of the initial reactions to this approach may be that it seems overly broad. An older blood brother who sneaks up behind his younger sibling and shouts "Booo!" tin can exist said to be creating art. But isn't the deviation between this and a Freddy Krueger movie merely one of degree? On the other mitt, my definition would exclude graphics used in advertising or political propaganda, as they are created as a means to an cease and not for their own sakes. Furthermore, 'communication' is non the best word for what I have in heed because it implies an unwarranted intention about the content represented. Artful responses are often underdetermined by the artist'southward intentions.
Mike Mallory, Everett, WA
The fundamental deviation between fine art and beauty is that art is well-nigh who has produced it, whereas beauty depends on who'due south looking.
Of form at that place are standards of dazzler – that which is seen as 'traditionally' beautiful. The game changers – the square pegs, so to speak – are those who saw traditional standards of beauty and decided specifically to become confronting them, perhaps merely to bear witness a bespeak. Accept Picasso, Munch, Schoenberg, to proper noun just three. They have fabricated a stand confronting these norms in their art. Otherwise their art is like all other art: its only function is to be experienced, appraised, and understood (or not).
Fine art is a means to state an opinion or a feeling, or else to create a different view of the world, whether it be inspired by the work of other people or something invented that'southward entirely new. Beauty is whatever attribute of that or anything else that makes an individual experience positive or grateful. Beauty alone is not art, but art can be made of, about or for beautiful things. Dazzler can be found in a snowy mount scene: fine art is the photograph 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, fine art is not necessarily positive: it can be deliberately hurtful or displeasing: information technology can brand you recall about or consider things that yous would rather not. Merely if information technology evokes an emotion in you, so it is art.
Chiara Leonardi, Reading, Berks
Art is a fashion of grasping the world. Non merely the physical world, which is what science attempts to do; but the whole earth, and specifically, the man world, the world of society and spiritual experience.
Art emerged around 50,000 years ago, long before cities and civilization, yet in forms to which we tin withal directly relate. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves, which so startled Picasso, have been carbon-dated at around 17,000 years old. Now, following the invention of photography and the devastating assail made by Duchamp on the self-appointed Art Establishment [see Brief Lives this consequence], art cannot be simply defined on the basis of concrete tests like 'fidelity of representation' or vague abstract concepts similar 'beauty'. So how can nosotros ascertain art in terms applying to both cave-dwellers and modern city sophisticates? To practice this nosotros need to ask: What does art exercise? And the answer is surely that it provokes an emotional, rather than a just cognitive response. 1 way of approaching the problem of defining art, then, could be to say: Fine art consists of shareable ideas that have a shareable emotional affect. Art need not produce beautiful objects or events, since a great piece of fine art could validly arouse emotions other than those aroused past beauty, such as terror, anxiety, or laughter. Yet to derive an adequate philosophical theory of art from this understanding means tackling the concept of 'emotion' head on, and philosophers have been notoriously reluctant to practice this. But not all of them: Robert Solomon'south book The Passions (1993) has fabricated an excellent first, and this seems to me to exist the way to go.
Information technology won't be easy. Poor former Richard Rorty was jumped on from a very great height when all he said was that literature, verse, patriotism, love and stuff like that were philosophically important. Art is vitally important to maintaining broad standards in civilisation. Its pedigree long predates philosophy, which is only 3,000 years sometime, and scientific discipline, which is a mere 500 years old. Art deserves much more attention from philosophers.
Alistair MacFarlane, Gwynedd
Some years ago I went looking for fine art. To brainstorm my journey I went to an art gallery. At that stage art to me was any I constitute in an art gallery. I constitute paintings, generally, and because they were in the gallery I recognised them as art. A particular Rothko painting was one colour and large. I observed a further piece that did not accept an obvious label. It was as well of one colour – white – and gigantically large, occupying one complete wall of the very loftier and spacious room and continuing on pocket-size roller wheels. On closer inspection I saw that it was a moveable wall, not a piece of art. Why could one slice of work be considered 'art' and the other not?
The answer to the question could, mayhap, exist found in the criteria of Berys Gaut to decide if some artefact is, indeed, art – that art pieces function only as pieces of fine art, just as their creators intended.
Just were they beautiful? Did they evoke an emotional response in me? Beauty is frequently associated with fine art. There is sometimes an expectation of encountering a 'beautiful' object when going to see a work of art, exist it painting, sculpture, book or performance. Of form, that expectation quickly changes as one widens the range of installations encountered. The classic example is Duchamp'southward Fountain (1917), a rather un-beautiful urinal.
Tin nosotros ascertain beauty? Let me try by suggesting that beauty is the capacity of an artefact to evoke a pleasurable emotional response. This might exist categorised as the 'like' response.
I definitely did not like Fountain at the initial level of appreciation. There was skill, of course, in its construction. But what was the skill in its presentation as fine art?
So I began to attain a definition of art. A work of fine art is that which asks a question which a not-art object such as a wall does not: What am I? What am I communicating? The responses, both of the creator artist and of the recipient audience, vary, but they invariably involve a judgement, a response to the invitation to answer. The answer, too, goes towards deciphering that deeper question – the 'Who am I?' which goes towards defining humanity.
Neil Hallinan, Maynooth, Co. Kildare
'Fine art' is where we make meaning beyond language. Art consists in the making of meaning through intelligent agency, eliciting an aesthetic response. It's a ways of advice where language is not sufficient to explain or draw its content. Art tin render visible and known what was previously unspoken. Because what art expresses and evokes is in function ineffable, we observe it difficult to define and delineate it. It is known through the experience of the audition too as the intention and expression of the creative person. The meaning is made by all the participants, and and so can never be fully known. Information technology is multifarious and on-going. Even a disagreement is a tension which is itself an expression of something.
Art drives the development of a civilisation, both supporting the establishment and likewise preventing destructive messages from existence silenced – art leads, mirrors and reveals change in politics and morality. Art plays a cardinal part in the creation of civilisation, and is an outpouring of idea and ideas from it, and and then it cannot exist fully understood in isolation from its context. Paradoxically, however, art tin communicate beyond linguistic communication and time, appealing to our common humanity and linking disparate communities. Possibly if wider audiences engaged with a greater variety of the world'southward creative traditions information technology could engender increased tolerance and mutual respect.
Another inescapable facet of fine art is that information technology is a commodity. This fact feeds the creative process, whether motivating the creative person to form an item of monetary value, or to avoid creating one, or to artistically commodify the aesthetic experience. The commodification of art also affects who is considered qualified to create fine art, annotate on information technology, and fifty-fifty define it, as those who benefit well-nigh strive to keep the value of 'fine art objects' high. These influences must feed into a civilisation'south understanding of what art is at any time, making thoughts about art culturally dependent. However, this commodification and the consistent closely-guarded role of the fine art critic also gives rise to a counter culture within art culture, frequently expressed through the creation of art that cannot be sold. The stratification of art by value and the resultant tension also adds to its significant, and the meaning of art to society.
Catherine Bosley, Monk Soham, Suffolk
Commencement of all nosotros must recognize the obvious. 'Art' is a discussion, and words and concepts are organic and alter their meaning through fourth dimension. So in the olden days, fine art meant craft. It was something you could excel at through do and hard work. You learnt how to paint or sculpt, and y'all learnt the special symbolism of your era. Through Romanticism and the birth of individualism, fine art came to mean originality. To do something new and never-heard-of divers the artist. His or her personality became essentially every bit important every bit the artwork itself. During the era of Modernism, the search for originality led artists to reevaluate art. What could art do? What could it represent? Could yous paint movement (Cubism, Futurism)? Could you paint the non-textile (Abstract Expressionism)? Fundamentally: could anything exist regarded equally fine art? A way of trying to solve this problem was to look beyond the piece of work itself, and focus on the fine art world: fine art was that which the institution of art – artists, critics, art historians, etc – was prepared to regard as art, and which was made public through the institution, e.g. galleries. That's Institutionalism – made famous through Marcel Duchamp's prepare-mades.
Institutionalism has been the prevailing notion through the later function of the twentieth century, at least in academia, and I would say it still holds a house grip on our conceptions. 1 example is the Swedish creative person Anna Odell. Her film sequence Unknown woman 2009-349701, for which she faked psychosis to be admitted to a psychiatric infirmary, was widely debated, and by many was non regarded every bit art. Simply because it was debated by the fine art world, it succeeded in breaking into the art world, and is today regarded every bit art, and Odell is regarded an artist.
Of course there are those who try and pause out of this hegemony, for example by refusing to play by the art world's unwritten rules. Andy Warhol with his Factory was one, even though he is today totally embraced by the fine art world. Another example is Damien Hirst, who, much like Warhol, pays people to create the physical manifestations of his ideas. He doesn't apply galleries and other art world-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 u.s. nigh art? Probably that art is a fleeting and chimeric concept. We will ever take fine art, only for the most part nosotros volition merely actually learn in hindsight what the art of our era was.
Tommy Törnsten, Linköping, Sweden
Fine art periods such as Classical, Byzantine, neo-Classical, Romantic, Modern and mail service-Modern 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 or less in sequence, by Imitationalist, Emotionalist, Expressivist, Formalist and Institutionalist theories of fine art. In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), Arthur Danto claims a distinctiveness for art that inextricably links its instances with acts of observation, without which all that could exist are 'material counterparts' or 'mere real things' rather than artworks. Nonetheless the competing theories, works of art tin can be seen to possess 'family unit resemblances' or 'strands of resemblance' linking very unlike instances equally 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 up' 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, then, is perchance "annihilation presented for our aesthetic contemplation" – a phrase coined past John Davies, former tutor at the School of Art Education, Birmingham, in 1971 – although 'annihilation' may seem too 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 equally tokens or types of the artwork persist. Paradoxically, such significance is sometimes attributed to objects neither intended every bit art, nor especially intended to be perceived aesthetically – for instance, votive, devotional, commemorative or utilitarian artefacts. Furthermore, aesthetic interests can be eclipsed by dubious investment practices and social kudos. When combined with celebrity and harmful forms of narcissism, they tin egregiously affect artistic actuality. These interests can exist overriding, and spawn products masquerading as art. And so it'due south up to discerning observers to spot whatever Fads, Fakes and Fantasies (Sjoerd Hannema, 1970).
Colin Brookes, Loughborough, Leicestershire
For me art is nix more and nothing less than the creative ability of individuals to express their agreement of some aspect of private or public life, like dear, conflict, fear, or pain. As I read a war poem by Edward Thomas, savour a Mozart piano concerto, or contemplate a One thousand.C. Escher drawing, I am often emotionally inspired by the moment and intellectually stimulated by the idea-process that follows. At this moment of discovery I humbly realize my views may be those shared past thousands, even millions beyond the globe. This is due in large part to the mass media's ability to control and exploit our emotions. The commercial success of a performance or production becomes the metric past which art is at present well-nigh exclusively gauged: quality in fine art has been sadly reduced to equating swell art with auction of books, number of views, or the downloading of recordings. As well bad if personal sensibilities most a item piece of art are lost in the greater blitz for immediate acceptance.
So where does that leave the subjective notion that dazzler can still be found in art? If beauty is the result of a process by which fine art gives pleasure to our senses, so it should remain a matter of personal discernment, even if outside forces clamour to accept command of it. In other words, nobody, including the art critic, should be able to tell the individual what is beautiful and what is not. The world of art is one of a abiding tension betwixt preserving individual tastes and promoting pop acceptance.
Ian Malcomson, Victoria, British Columbia
What we perceive as beautiful does not offend us on any level. It is a personal judgement, a subjective opinion. A memory from once we gazed upon something beautiful, a sight ever so pleasing to the senses or to the centre, oft fourth dimension stays with us forever. I shall never forget walking into Balzac's house in France: the scent of lilies was so overwhelming that I had a numinous moment. The intensity of the emotion evoked may non be possible to explain. I don't experience it's important to contend why I recall a flower, painting, sunset or how the lite streaming through a stained-drinking glass window is beautiful. The power of the sights create an emotional reaction in me. I don't expect or business organization myself that others will hold with me or not. Tin all agree that an act of kindness is beautiful?
A thing of beauty is a whole; elements coming together making it so. A single castor stroke of a painting does non alone create the affect of beauty, simply all together, it becomes cute. A perfect flower is cute, when all of the petals together form its perfection; a pleasant, intoxicating odour is also part of the beauty.
In thinking about the question, 'What is dazzler?', I've simply come up away with the idea that I am the beholder whose eye information technology is in. Suffice it to say, my private assessment of what strikes me equally beautiful is all I need to know.
Cheryl Anderson, Kenilworth, Illinois
Stendhal said, "Beauty is the promise of happiness", but this didn't get to the centre of the thing. Whose dazzler are we talking nearly? Whose happiness?
Consider if a snake made fine art. What would it believe to be beautiful? What would it deign to make? Snakes have poor eyesight and detect the globe largely through a chemosensory organ, the Jacobson's organ, or through heat-sensing pits. Would a picture in its human being grade even make sense to a snake? So their fine art, their beauty, would be entirely alien to ours: it would not exist visual, and fifty-fifty if they had songs they would be foreign; later all, snakes do not take 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 footing – nosotros can see that dazzler is truly in the eye of the beholder. Information technology may cross our lips to speak of the nature of dazzler in billowy language, but we do so entirely with a forked tongue if we do then seriously. The aesthetics of representing beauty ought non to fool united states into thinking dazzler, equally some abstract concept, truly exists. Information technology requires a viewer and a context, and the value we place on certain combinations of colors or sounds over others speaks of cypher more than preference. Our want for pictures, moving or otherwise, is because our organs developed in such a manner. A snake would take no utilize for the visual globe.
I am thankful to have human art over serpent fine art, just I would no doubt exist amazed at serpentine art. Information technology would require an intellectual sloughing of many conceptions we accept for granted. For that, considering the possibility of this extreme thought is worthwhile: if snakes could write poesy, what would it exist?
Derek Halm, Portland, Oregon
[A: Sssibilance and sussssuration – Ed.]
The questions, 'What is art?' and 'What is beauty?' are different types and shouldn't exist conflated.
With boring predictability, almost all contemporary discussers of fine art lapse into a 'relative-off', whereby they go to abrasive lengths to demonstrate how open-minded they are and how ineluctably loose the concept of art is. If fine art is only any you want information technology to be, can we not just end the chat there? It's a washed deal. I'll throw playdough on to a sheet, and we can pretend to display our modern credentials of acceptance and insight. This just doesn't work, and we all know it. If fine art is to hateful annihilation, in that location has to be some working definition of what it is. If art tin can be anything to anybody at anytime, and so at that place ends the discussion. What makes art special – and worth discussing – is that it stands higher up or outside everyday things, such as everyday food, paintwork, or sounds. Art comprises special or infrequent dishes, paintings, and music.
And so what, then, is my definition of art? Briefly, I believe in that location must be at least two considerations to label something every bit 'art'. The first is that there must be something recognizable in the way of 'author-to-audience reception'. I hateful to say, there must be the recognition that something was fabricated for an audience of some kind to receive, discuss or enjoy. Implicit in this point is the axiomatic recognizability of what the art really is – in other words, the author doesn't have to tell you it'southward art when y'all otherwise wouldn't have whatsoever idea. The 2d betoken is merely the recognition of skill: some obvious skill has to exist involved in making fine art. This, in my view, would exist the minimum requirements – or definition – of fine art. Even if you disagree with the particulars, some definition is required to make anything at all art. Otherwise, what are we even discussing? I'm breaking the mold and ask for brass tacks.
Brannon McConkey, Tennessee
Writer of Student of Life: Why Becoming Engaged in Life, Fine art, and Philosophy Can Lead to a Happier Existence
Man beings announced to have a compulsion to categorize, to organize and ascertain. We seek to impose club on a welter of sense-impressions and memories, seeing regularities and patterns in repetitions and associations, always on the lookout for correlations, eager to decide cause and consequence, so that we might requite sense to what might otherwise seem random and inconsequential. Withal, particularly in the terminal century, nosotros have also learned to take pleasance in the reflection of unstructured perceptions; our artistic ways of seeing and listening have expanded to comprehend disharmony and irregularity. This has meant that culturally, an ever-widening gap has grown between the attitudes and opinions of the majority, who continue to define art in traditional ways, having to exercise with order, harmony, representation; and the minority, who look for originality, who try to meet the world afresh, and strive for difference, and whose critical practise is rooted in abstraction. In between there are many who abjure both extremes, and who both find and give pleasance both in defining a personal vision and in practising adroitness.
There will ever be 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, as innovators push at the boundaries. At the same fourth dimension, nosotros will continue to accept pleasance in the beauty of a mathematical equation, a finely-tuned motorcar, a successful scientific experiment, the applied science of landing a probe on a comet, an achieved verse form, a striking portrait, the sound-globe of a symphony. We apportion significance and meaning to what nosotros find of value and wish to share with our fellows. Our art and our definitions of beauty reverberate our human nature and the multiplicity of our creative efforts.
In the terminate, because of our individuality and our varied histories and traditions, our debates will ever exist inconclusive. If we are wise, we will wait and mind with an open spirit, and sometimes with a wry smile, always celebrating the diversity of homo imaginings and achievements.
David Howard, Church building Stretton, Shropshire
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Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/What_is_Art_and_or_What_is_Beauty
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