1. Department for
Continuing Education
Music and Art
Marilou Polymeropoulou
marilou.polymeropoulou@music.ox.ac.uk
Week 1
http://musicandartoxford.wordpress.com/
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

2. Course material
• Audiovisual presentations
• Scores, pictures, audio and video recordings
• Books and articles (library, print, and online)
• Course blog
• Field trip
• Course work
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

3. Week 1 lecture structure
Part 1: Introduction to terminology: art and aesthetics
Part 2: course overview
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

4. “To see something as art requires something the
eye cannot decry - an atmosphere of artistic
theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an
artworld”
A. Danto (in Frith 2002:249)
“To grasp the meaning of music is to hear something
not simply present to the ear. It is to understand a
musical culture, to have a scheme of interpretation”
S. Frith (ibid)
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

5. Plato
Πλάτων
• 424/423 - 348/347 BC
• Founder of the Academy of Athens
• Philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric,
mathematics, art, politics
• Western philosophy
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

6. Plato: on art
• The Republic (Πολιτεία, Politeia,
literal translation “society”)
• Imitation and representation of reality
• Therapeutic, healing for human soul
• World of Ideas vs. world of tangible objects
• Art as craft, Techne (Τέχνη)
• Bad art undermining morality vs correct, good art
shaping character
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

7. Aristotle,
Ἀριστοτέλης
• 384 - 322 BC
• Student of Plato
• Founder of Lyceum
• Physics, metaphysics, poetry, theatre,
music, rhetoric, politics, ethics
• Influenced Western philosophy
• Reason, logic, aesthetics
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

8. Aristotle on art
• Separate art from politics
• Channelling human creativity: 1) gnosis (theory,
knowledge), 2) praxis (practice), 3) poiesis (creating)
• Categories of Art: 1)imitation of visual representations
(colours and designs) 2) imitation of human behaviour
(poetry, lyrics, dancing)
• Pleasure and art
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

9. Raphael Scuola di Atene (1510-11) (detail)
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

10. Organon (Tool,
Organum)
• Ontology - On + Logos
• The Categories (predicaments)
• Influence on aesthetics and evaluation
theories
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

11. The Categories
• 1. Substance (Human)
• 2. Quantity (5 ft. 6 in. tall)
• 3. Quality (white)
• 4. Relation (shorter than the board)
• 5. Place (in a classroom)
• 6. Time (now)
• 7. Posture (standing)
• 8. Possession - Habitus (clothed, wearing black trousers)
• 9. Action (breathing, teaching)
• 10. Passivity (being watched, listened to)
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

12. • Ancient aesthetics: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece,
China, Rome, India, Mayan
• Islamic aesthetics: Islamic culture. Arabesque, mosaic,
islamic calligraphy and architecture
• Indian aesthetics: Spiritual or philosophical states in the
audience. Architecture, sculpture, painting, literature,
music and dancing
• Chinese aesthetics: Confucius and the role of arts and
humanities
• African aesthetics: oral and written traditions
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

13. Western Aesthetics
• First used by Alexander Baumgarten
Aesthetica (1750-1758): the science which
examines beautiful in nature and art
• Immanuel Kant, Taste (Geschmack) in
Critique of Judgment (1790)
• Hegel (1823-27): Taught Aesthetics as a
secondary spiritual reality
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

14. Hegel and Kant
• To what extent art is the purpose or the
vessel of reality?
• How close to reality is art?
• Is art for everybody?
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

15. Leo Tolstoy “What is
art?” (1897)
• Essay in which he argues against aesthetic
theories which define art in terms of good,
truth and beauty
• Art at his time was corrupt and decadent.
Artists had been misled
• Art requires capacity to unite people via
communication
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

16. Week 1
17/1/12
• Course overview
• Introduction to terms art and aesthetics
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

17. Week 2
24/1/12
The work of art pt.1
• On listening: the art of music and sound
• What is music?
• Music aesthetics
• The evaluation and appreciation of music
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

18. Week 3
31/1/12
The work of art pt. 2
• Visual and hybrid forms of art
• Jean Cocteau and Les Six
• Personal reflections
• Examples: Criticism, evaluation, aesthetics
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

19. Week 4
7/2/12
• Impressionism
• Debussy’s “The Sea” (1905): listening,
reading, representing
• Monet’s “Impression, sunrise” (1872):
landscape and realism
• Reflections on Expressionism
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

20. Week 5
14/2/12
• Avant-Garde traditions
• The art concept in the 20th century
• Examples
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

21. Week 6
21/2/12
• Jazz, Fox-Trot and Pop
• Dancing and performing arts
• Popular culture and the Frankfurt school
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

22. Week 7
28/2/12
• Ethnographic art and representation
• Defining cultural aesthetics
• The Rules of Art (Bourdieu)
• Examples
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

23. Week 8
6/3/12
• Collections
• Hard Rock Cafe: restaurant and museum?
• The art of collecting
• Top 5 lists and Desert Island Discs
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

24. Week 9
13/3/12
• Field work
• Visiting Oxonian museums (Pitt-Rivers/The
Ashmolean).
• Museum exercise
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

25. Week 10
20/3/12
• Workshop: re-examining art and music
• Discussion of coursework
• Summary of the course
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

26. Exercises
• Aristotle’s 10 Categories for Cueva de las
manos (Argentina 14,000-9,000 BC)
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

27. M. Babbitt’s article
• Who cares if you listen? (1958)
Wednesday, 18 January 2012

28. Personal aesthetics
• Choose artwork
• Describe its ontology (Aristotle’s 10
categories)
• Why is it/is it not important for you? Justify
according to influence, communication
(Tolstoi), culture, society etc
Wednesday, 18 January 2012