AestheticsStudy of Beauty or Philosophy of Art..

Unit 2Evolution of Art, Culture and Technology

Content Layout: AESTHETICS

• What is Aesthetics? Why study Aesthetics?

• Aesthetics Experience: Visual, Tactile, Kinesthetic, Olfactory, Lyricism, Auditory, Gustatory, 2D Art, Digital Art..

• Concept of Beauty?!

• What do u understand by Aesthetics?

• How philosophers have said it…Classical theories of aesthetics.

• Relationship of aesthetics with other cultural values.

What is Aesthetics?

• The study of beauty or philosophy of art

• It explains how people perceive and access the meaning, importance and purpose of art.

Traditional Aesthetics Today’s Aesthetics

• Focused on nature of beauty,

relationship between:

When is something a work

of art?

What role do emotions play

in appreciating art?

What is taste?

When is art beneficial?

When is art destructive?

Can ugly art be good art?

Aesthetic triad

Artist

PerceiverArt Object

The connection between people’s

senses, emotions and reason.

Why study Aesthetics?

• Aesthetics examines what makes something beautiful, sublime, disgusting, funny, silly, entertaining, pretentious, harmonious, boring or tragic..

• Judgment of Aesthetics clearly rely on our ability to discriminate at a sensory level.

Aesthetical Experience..Multi Sensory factors affecting aesthetics..

Aesthetical experience is not only about liking or disliking, its about the interaction between the product, consumer and the environment.

What is environment?

Aesthetics in Movies..

Aesthetics in 2D Art..

Aesthetics in Digital Art..

Aesthetics in Maps!?

Aesthetics in Marketing..

Aesthetics in Music..

Aesthetics in Performing Arts..

Aesthetics in Gastronomy..

Aesthetics in Information Technology / Appliances.

Concepts of Beauty?Aesthetics is the study of beauty or philosophy of art..

How philosophers have said it…Classical Theories of aesthetics

• Aristotle believed that art can be studied and analyzed in the same way asnatural phenomena. In Poetics he identifies standards of art forms.

• Knowledge of art can be used for good and bad purpose so contemporaryaesthetics includes questions about whether and how art and knowledge ofart can be used to achieve the best possible ends.

Art work…Expression, attitude & ability.

• Role of Artist is also important: according to Aristotle, the act of

creating art brings out a sense of catharsis, an emotional purging that

artist experience as an intuitive signal that a work is complete.

• Artists express themselves or their feelings in art, conveying a message

in emotional and aesthetic level.

• Audience must be open and capable of responding aesthetically to the

message.

• So, attitude and ability plays a big role in defining how art is perceived.

• Aesthetic attitude: disinterest (impartial) approach that enables someone to contemplate anobject on its own terms, regardless of the use to which it may be out and the emotions it mayarouse.

• Objectivity refers to judgments based on certain qualities or relations that are believed to bepart of the object itself.

• Subjectivity refers to judgments based on emotions- the amount of pleasure or displeasure theperceiver feels when experiencing an object.

• Morality and art are often connected: aesthetic experience with moral goodness.

• People can’t really understand aesthetic experience without moral connection

• Human nature has two sides: sensuous (aesthetic) and rational (moral).

• Art discussions : morality refers to ability to live according to widely accepted codes of virtousbehavior.

How philosophers have said it…

How I Perceive It!

• Aesthetics is everywhere; aesthetic experiences differ throughout cultures, values, backgrounds.

• Aesthetic experience richer when subtleties of works are understood.

• Aesthetic attitude helps people become more aware of sensory experiences and this leads to heightened perception of life and opens mind to learning.

Questions: Aesthetics..

• Aesthetics, branch of philosophy concerned with the essence and perceptionof beauty and ugliness.

• Aesthetics also deals with the question of whether such qualities areobjectively present in the things they appear to qualify, or whether they existonly in the mind of the individual; hence, whether objects are perceived by aparticular mode, the aesthetic mode, or whether instead the objects have, inthemselves, special qualities—aesthetic qualities.

• Philosophy also asks if there is a difference between the beautiful and thesublime.

• Criticism and the psychology of art, although independent disciplines, arerelated to aesthetics. The psychology of art is concerned with such elementsof the arts as human responses to color, sound, line, form, and words andwith the ways in which the emotions condition such responses.

Classical Theories of Aesthetics..

• The first aesthetic theory of any scope is that of Plato, who believed thatreality consists of archetypes, or forms, beyond human sensation, whichare the models for all things that exist in human experience.

• The objects of such experience are examples, or imitations, of thoseforms. The philosopher tries to reason from the object experienced to thereality it imitates; the artist copies the experienced object, or uses it as amodel for the work. Thus, the artist's work is an imitation of an imitation.

• Plato's thinking had a marked ascetic strain. In his Republic, Plato went sofar as to banish some types of artists from his ideal society because hethought their work encouraged immorality or portrayed base characters,and that certain musical compositions caused laziness or incited people toimmoderate actions.

Classical Theories of Aesthetics..

• Aristotle also spoke of art as imitation, but not in the Platonic sense. One could imitate "things as they ought to be," he wrote, and "art partly completes what nature cannot bring to a finish."

• The artist separates the form from the matter of some objects of experience, such as the human body or a tree, and imposes that form on another matter, such as canvas or marble.

• Thus, imitation is not just copying an original model, nor is it devising a symbol for the original; rather, it is a particular representation of an aspect of things, and each work is an imitation of the universal whole.

Classical Theories of Aesthetics..

• Aesthetics was inseparable from morality and politics for both Aristotleand Plato. The former wrote about music in his Politics, maintaining thatart affects human character, and hence the social order. Because Aristotleheld that happiness is the aim of life, he believed that the major functionof art is to provide human satisfaction.

• In the Poetics, his great work on the principles of drama, Aristotle arguedthat tragedy so stimulates the emotions of pity and fear, which heconsidered morbid and unhealthful, that by the end of the play thespectator is purged of them.

• This catharsis makes the audience psychologically healthier and thusmore capable of happiness, advocating its doctrine of the three unities:time, place, and action

Culture…

• Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values,attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations,concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group ofpeople in the course of generations through individual and group striving.

• Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.

• Culture is communication, communication is culture.

• Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person'slearned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behaviorthrough social learning.

• A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbolsthat they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along bycommunication and imitation from one generation to the next.

Culture…

• Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group's skills,knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned anddeliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.

• Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired andtransmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups,including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists oftraditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the onehand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influencesupon further action.

• Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generallyconsidered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from generation togeneration.

• Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of onegroup or category of people from another.

Theory of Cultural Determinism

• The position that the ideas, meanings, beliefs and values people learn as members ofsociety determines human nature. People are what they learn. Optimistic version ofcultural determinism place no limits on the abilities of human beings to do or to bewhatever they want. Some anthropologists suggest that there is no universal "rightway" of being human. "Right way" is almost always "our way"; that "our way" in onesociety almost never corresponds to "our way" in any other society. Proper attitude ofan informed human being could only be that of tolerance.

• The optimistic version of this theory postulates that human nature being infinitelymalleable, human being can choose the ways of life they prefer.

• The pessimistic version maintains that people are what they are conditioned to be;this is something over which they have no control. Human beings are passivecreatures and do whatever their culture tells them to do. This explanation leads tobehaviorism that locates the causes of human behavior in a realm that is totallybeyond human control.

Cultural Relativism

• Different cultural groups think, feel, and act differently. There is noscientific standards for considering one group as intrinsically superioror inferior to another. Studying differences in culture among groupsand societies presupposes a position of cultural relativism. It does notimply normalcy for oneself, nor for one's society.

• It, however, calls for judgment when dealing with groups or societiesdifferent from one's own. Information about the nature of culturaldifferences between societies, their roots, and their consequencesshould precede judgment and action.

• Negotiation is more likely to succeed when the parties concernedunderstand the reasons for the differences in viewpoints.

Cultural Ethnocentrism• Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own culture is superior to that of other cultures. It is a form of

reductionism that reduces the "other way" of life to a distorted version of one's own. This is particularly important in case of global dealings when a company or an individual is imbued with the idea that methods, materials, or ideas that worked in the home country will also work abroad. Environmental differences are, therefore, ignored. Ethnocentrism, in relation to global dealings, can be categorized as follows:

– Important factors in business are overlooked because of the obsession with certain cause-effect relationships in one's own country. It is always a good idea to refer to checklists of human variables in order to be assured that all major factors have been at least considered while working abroad.

– Even though one may recognize the environmental differences and problems associated with change, but may focus only on achieving objectives related to the home-country. This may result in the loss of effectiveness of a company or an individual in terms of international competitiveness. The objectives set for global operations should also be global.

– The differences are recognized, but it is assumed that associated changes are so basic that they can be achieved effortlessly. It is always a good idea to perform a cost-benefit analysis of the changes proposed. Sometimes a change may upset important values and thereby may face resistance from being implemented. The cost of some changes may exceed the benefits derived from the implementation of such changes.

Layers of Culture

• People even within the same culture carry several layers of mentalprogramming within themselves. Different layers of culture existat the following levels:

• The national level: Associated with the nation as a whole.

• The regional level: Associated with ethnic, linguistic, or religiousdifferences that exist within a nation.

• The gender level: Associated with gender differences (female vs.male)

• The generation level: Associated with the differences betweengrandparents and parents, parents and children.

• The social class level: Associated with educational opportunitiesand differences in occupation.

• The corporate level: Associated with the particular culture of anorganization. Applicable to those who are employed.

Figure 1. Manifestation

of Culture at Different

Levels of Depth

Reconciliation of Cultural Differences

Cultural awareness:

• Before venturing on a global assignment, it is probably necessary to identify thecultural differences that may exist between one's home country and the country ofbusiness operation. Where the differences exist, one must decide whether and towhat extent the home-country practices may be adapted to the foreign environment.Most of the times the differences are not very apparent or tangible. Certain aspects ofa culture may be learned consciously (e.g. methods of greeting people), some otherdifferences are learned subconsciously (e.g. methods of problem solving). Thebuilding of cultural awareness may not be an easy task, but once accomplished, itdefinitely helps a job done efficiently in a foreign environment.

• Discussions and reading about other cultures definitely helps build culturalawareness, but opinions presented must be carefully measured. Sometimes they mayrepresent unwarranted stereotypes, an assessment of only a subgroup of a particulargroup of people, or a situation that has since undergone drastic changes. It is always agood idea to get varied viewpoints about the same culture.

Clustering cultures

• Some countries may share many attributes that help mold their cultures (the modifiers may be language, religion, geographical location, etc.). Based on this data obtained from past cross-cultural studies, countries may be grouped by similarities in values and attitudes. Fewer differences may be expected when moving within a cluster than when moving from one cluster to another.

• Determining the extent of global involvement: All enterprises operating globally need not have the same degree of cultural awareness. Figure 2 illustrates extent to which a company needs to understand global cultures at different levels of involvement.

• The further a company moves out from the sole role of doing domestic business, the more it needs to understand cultural differences. Moving outward on more than one axis simultaneously makes the need for building cultural awareness even more essential.

Thank you for listening..