2. 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.
3. 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 What amazing
how this might pyramids! How did
be useful… you build them?
What a feat of
engineering!
Nanotechnology?
Magnificent! How
long did this take
you to develop?
4. But then you take them to the Tate Modern. They are baffled.
But what is all
this stuff for
exactly? What is How can it be good
its function? if it has no use?
Are we supposed
to just stand here
and look at it?
5. 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 What exactly does
doesn’t really do this ‘music’ of yours
anything for me. add to your lives?
What’s the
difference between
this and the traffic
noise outside?
6. Finally, you give them a selection of plays, novels and poems to read.
They are similarly perplexed.
What value do
these texts have if How can something
they’re not true? based purely on
fiction contribute to
knowledge?
If you want to better understand
this thing you call the ‘human
condition’, why not just study
history, psychology and
anthropology?’
7. 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
‘The only end of writing is to enable the
readers better to enjoy life or better to
endure it.’
Samuel Johnson, 1709-84
‘In poetry, new things are made familiar and
familiar things are made new.’
Ben Jonson, 1572-1637
‘Art is not a copy of the real world; one of
the damn things is quite enough.’
Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941
‘Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth –
at least the truth that is given us to
understand.’
Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973
8. What constitutes art?
Which of the following would you classify as art and why?
the Grand Canyon
A painting of the Grand A holiday snap of the
Canyon Grand Canyon
opera music rap music computer-generated
music
a man dripping a monkey a machine launching
paint randomly dripping paint paint at a canvas in the
on a canvas randomly on a Royal Academy
canvas
the Mona Lisa a child’s drawing of an artist’s drawing of a
a face face done in the naïve
style of a child
9. ‘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
10. 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.
11. 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
12. What constitutes art? 3 possible criteria
#1. Problems with the intention criterion
• Doesn’t this imply that everything can be art?
The Fountain Bicycle Wheel Bottle Rack
The ‘readymades’ of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968): everyday objects taken
out of their everyday context, renamed and put in an art gallery.
13. 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
14. 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
Van Meegeren: forgery of Vermeer’s The
Disciples at Emmaus, 1936 – purchased Picasso: Bull’s Head, 1942, described as
by the Rembrandt Society as a real the ‘most perfect metamorphosis’.
Vermeer for $300,000 in 1937.
15. 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
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
‘l(a’, by American E. E. Cummings,
1958
16. What constitutes art? 3 possible criteria
l(a When the text is laid out horizontally, it reads:
le l(a leaf falls)oneliness
In other words, the phrase a leaf falls is inserted within the first
af two letters of loneliness.
fa
ll Critic Robert DiYanni notes that the image of a single falling leaf is
s) a common symbol for loneliness, and that this sense of loneliness
one is enhanced by the structure of the poem. He writes that the
fragmentation of the words "illustrates visually the separation
l that is the primary cause of loneliness". The fragmentation of the
iness 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".
17. 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.
18. 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
Stravinsky: Demoiselles
Rite of Spring, d’Avignon,
1913 1907
19. Judging art
To 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)?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There is no accounting for taste.
Given our criteria for what constitutes art, how are these well-known
statements problematic?
20. The paradox of aesthetic judgement
On 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’.
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
London-based art lunacy. It doesn't matter if they [the
critic Brian Sewell public] like it."
What do you think of Sewell’s statement? As members of ‘the public’, are we
to bow to the art critic’s ‘better judgement’?
21. 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.
22. 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 the
viewer.
