The arts

Illuminating the human condition

Aims

• Art and knowledge

• Comparisons between the arts and science

What is art?

• Visual arts

• Performance arts

• Literature

• Aesthetic urge is one of the things that distinguishes us from other animals

What is art?

• Manmade

• 3 possible criteria: intentions of the artist, the quality of the work, the response of the spectators

Intentions of the artist

• Intended to evoke an aesthetic response - to please or provoke

• Sunset

Intentions of the artist

• Tracey Emin - My bed

• Exhibited at Turner Prize Exhibition London

• Sold to C. Saatchi for 150,000 P.

Quality of the work

• Skill, talent, training • Beauty with respect

to the form and content– Content: what it

depicts– Form: unity, order,

rhythm, balance, proportion, harmony, symmetry

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZD9nt_wsY0

Quality of the work

• Lack of originality - Kitsch, clichéd art: USA’s most popular painting

• Forgeries: Van Meegeren, the Disciples at Emmaus

• Picasso’s Bull’s head

Response of spectators

• The general public: Stravinsky’s Rite of springs, Picasso’s

• Expert opinions

Aesthetics and likes/dislikes

• Aesthetic judgments should be disinterested

• Its is a great work of art but I don’t like it (Pele)

• Universal standards in art?

• Cultural differences

Art and knowledge

• Art as an imitation: ‘art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes it visible’. (P. Klee)

• Art affects the way we perceive reality (photo)

Art and knowledge

• Art as communication: breadth and depth of human experience

• song

Art and knowledge

• Art as education: moral provocation (role models)