The arts

Areas of knowledge

The arts

This week:• What is art?• Are aesthetic judgments objective or subjective?

Next week:• How do the arts contribute to our knowledge of the world?• What distinguishes the arts from other areas of knowledge

(ethics, history, mathematics, natural sciences, human sciences)?

• NB. For next week’s group session: come with an example of ‘good’ art and an example of ‘bad’ art (in your opinion) to discuss briefly.

Scenario

Imagine that aliens have just landed on earth. They are highly intelligent and curious about human life. You tell them all about our various mathematical and scientific theories, our engineering achievements and the history of our civilisation. The aliens see the sense in all of this and you can tell that they are quite impressed.

Yes, I can see how this might

be useful…

Nanotechnology? Magnificent! How long did this take you to develop?

What amazing pyramids! How did

you build them? What a feat of engineering!

?

But then you take them to the Tate Modern. They are baffled.

But what is all this stuff for

exactly? What is its function?

Are we supposed to just stand here

and look at it?

How can it be good if it has no use?

You then take them to a concert to listen to a Bach piano concerto. They are confused.

The pianist is clearly very

talented, but it doesn’t really do anything for me.

What’s the difference between this and the traffic

noise outside?

What exactly does this ‘music’ of yours

add to your lives?

Finally, you give them a selection of plays, novels and poems to read. They are similarly perplexed.

What value do these texts have if they’re not true?

If you want to better understand this thing you call the ‘human condition’, why not just study

history, psychology and anthropology?’

How can something based purely on

fiction contribute to knowledge?

You all study the arts in some form or other. What might you say to convince the aliens of their value?

‘Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.’ Georges Braque, 1882-1963

‘Art is not a copy of the real world; one of the damn things is quite enough.’Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941

‘In poetry, new things are made familiar and familiar things are made new.’Ben Jonson, 1572-1637

‘Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth – at least the truth that is given us to understand.’ Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973

‘The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.’Samuel Johnson, 1709-84

What constitutes art?Which of the following would you classify as art and why?

the Grand Canyon

A holiday snap of the Grand Canyon

A painting of the Grand Canyon

rap musicopera music computer-generated music

a monkey dripping paint randomly on a canvas

a man dripping paint randomly on a canvas

a machine launching paint at a canvas in the Royal Academy

a child’s drawing of a face

the Mona Lisa an artist’s drawing of a face done in the naïve style of a child

‘An unsmiling man inserts a round into the breech of the cannon. There is a hiss of compressed air, a very loud bang, and a 20-pound slug of solid crimson paint makes a 50mph parabola across the room, landing with a satisfying wet whumff on the far wall.’

From a Guardian review of Anish Kapoor’s exhibition, 21/09/09

What constitutes art? 3 possible criteria

#1. The intentions of the artist

• The artist has the intention of evoking an aesthetic response in the audience.

• The work should not be (although it sometimes is) made with a practical end in mind. It should aim to please or to provoke the viewer in some way.

Works of art differ from natural objects/phenomena (e.g. a sunset) in that they are made with an intention, and they differ from everyday objects (e.g. pots and pans) in that they are made with the specific intention to please/provoke rather than for a practical end.

What constitutes art? 3 possible criteria

#1. Problems with the intention criterion

• Is intention sufficient to make something art?

Tracey Emin’s My Bed, 1999, bought by collector Charles Saatchi for £150,000

What constitutes art? 3 possible criteria

#1. Problems with the intention criterion

• Doesn’t this imply that everything can be art?

The ‘readymades’ of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968): everyday objects taken out of their everyday context, renamed and put in an art gallery.

The Fountain Bicycle Wheel Bottle Rack

What constitutes art? 3 possible criteria#2. The quality of the work

• We expect an artist to have a high level of technical skill. A work of art should not be something that a person with no talent or training in the arts could have made.

• This is connected with the idea of beauty. A great work of art is a perfect marriage of form (how it is composed) and content (what it depicts)

Edvard Munch’s The Scream A parody of The Scream

What constitutes art? 3 possible criteria

#2. Problems with the quality criterion

• A work may display considerable technical competence but lack originality

• A work may show originality, but require little technical skill

Picasso: Bull’s Head, 1942, described as the ‘most perfect metamorphosis’.

Van Meegeren: forgery of Vermeer’s The Disciples at Emmaus, 1936 – purchased by the Rembrandt Society as a real Vermeer for $300,000 in 1937.

What constitutes art? 3 possible criteria

#2. Problems with the quality criterion

• A work may display considerable technical competence but lack originality

• A work may show originality, but require little technical skill

‘l(a’, by American E. E. Cummings, 1958

l(aleaffalls)oneliness

What constitutes art? 3 possible criteriaWhen the text is laid out horizontally, it reads: l(a leaf falls)oneliness In other words, the phrase a leaf falls is inserted within the first two letters of loneliness.

Critic Robert DiYanni notes that the image of a single falling leaf is a common symbol for loneliness, and that this sense of loneliness is enhanced by the structure of the poem. He writes that the fragmentation of the words "illustrates visually the separation that is the primary cause of loneliness". The fragmentation of the word loneliness is especially significant, since it highlights the fact that that word contains the word one. In addition, the isolated letter ‘l’ can initially appear to be the numeral one.

Cummings biographer Richard S. Kennedy calls the poem "the most delicately beautiful literary construct that Cummings ever created".

l(aleaffalls)oneliness

What constitutes art? 3 possible criteria#3. Response of spectators

‘The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.’ Marcel Duchamp

• A work of art requires an appreciative spectator in order to complete it.

What constitutes art? 3 possible criteria#3. Problems with the spectator criterion

• Some works of art gain mass appeal, whereas others are a more ‘acquired taste’. How can the artistic value of such works be compared? Is one kind of spectator ‘better’ than another?

• The general public can be hostile to new artistic movements since they tend to prefer the familiar to the strange, and content to form. Subsequently, ground-breaking works of art may not get the reception a visionary artist desires or expects.

Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

Stravinsky: Rite of Spring, 1913

Judging artTo what extent are our judgements about what distinguishes ‘good art’ from ‘bad art’ objective? How far are they influenced by the culture we grow up in and our personal tastes (i.e. the subjective)?

There is no accounting for taste.Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Given our criteria for what constitutes art, how are these well-known statements problematic?

The paradox of aesthetic judgementOn the one hand, we accept that there are standards of aesthetic judgement and that some judgements are better than others; on the other hand, we tend to say that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and that ‘there is no accounting for taste’.

What do you think of Sewell’s statement? As members of ‘the public’, are we to bow to the art critic’s ‘better judgement’?

Referring to the art of Banksy: "The public doesn't know good from bad. For this city to be guided by the opinion of people who don't know anything about art is lunacy. It doesn't matter if they [the public] like it."

London-based art critic Brian Sewell

Solution? Be ‘disinterested’ (Kant)1. ‘I like this painting.’2. ‘This painting is beautiful.’

How are these two statements different?

The first is clearly a judgement of taste (subjective), while the second is an aesthetic judgement (objective).

According to philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), we must delineate between these two types of judgement. Making an aesthetic judgement requires us to be disinterested. In other words, we should try to go beyond our individual tastes and preferences so that we can appreciate art from a universal standpoint.

Anish Kapoor’s exhibition at the Royal Academy, 2009

The artist’s work has its own aesthetic – a set of principles that govern how the artist wants the work to be viewed. Kapoor’s work is a good example of how an artist seeks to evoke an aesthetic response in theviewer.