Philosophy of Art Midterm
Terms
undefined, object
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- Danto
- Art is dead as a cultural institution. People think too much about art. There is a diverse set of things that allow objects/pieces to be described as works of art.
- Plato "Art and Appearance"
- Art is bad for society. It is imitating God and creating the appearance of the representation but not the reality, or the truth.
- John Berger
- Art of any period serves the ideological interests of the ruling class at the time. Oil painting has the special ability to render the tangibility, the texture, the lustre and the solidity of what it predicts.
- John Cage "Experimental Music"
- difference between composing music and hearing music. new music- nothing takes place but sound.
- Bell "Emotion in response to significant form"
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Artwork provokes emotion. Aesthetic emotion. Believes 'significant form' is a universal quality without which art cannot exist.
Bell thinks that to appreciate a work of art we must only bring a sense of form and a knowledge of three dimensional spaces.
1. disregard the respresentation of characteristics of object looking at
2. disregard all worldly experiences of associations, memories and emotions
3. attend to adjust the arrangement of lines shapes and colors.
Bell thinks that representation is often a sign of weakness in a work of art.
A good work of art carries a person who is capable of appreciating it out of life into ecstacy. - Significant Form
- when lines and colours combined in a particular way with certain forms and relations of forms stir our aesthetic emotion.
- Tolstoy "What is art?"
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Art has a primarily moral function.
Art serves its true purpose only when it communicates emotion.
“Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others the feeling he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.â€
Art only successful when audience feels what the artist felt- intended communication.
Tolstoy talks about the fact that art is costly thus being inaccessible. This has weakened art.
if art is a spiritual blessing then it should be open to anyone.
also lost its beauty and form because art became affected. - Milan Kundera (Kitch)
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Kitch is dictated by the heart
derives from basic images/memories.
Kitch is an aesthetic ideal of all politicians and political parties and movements. - Robin Collingwood "Expressing Emotion"
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A Work of art is a process of discovery and clarification. This process is also the process of defining things/ideas/ feelings.
Act of expressing emotion is an exploration of personal emotion.
Not showing emotion= oppressive. - Bullough "Psychical Distance"
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One must put himself away from all memories in order to get an interested viewing.
The critic cannot appreciate the work- they know too much about what they are looking at and cannot do a logical definition of conceptual considerations.
Critic looking at it practically. - Dickie "The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude"
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refutes Bullough:
1. no distinctive kind of state involved in the appreciation of aesthetic properties.
2. Attention- not distinction just have to pay attention and not get distracted.
3. Expands space of aesthetically relevant features.
States that there is no such thing as a mental state. - Wimsatt and Beardsley "The Intentional Fallacy"
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What is important in art is what is in front of you.
Artists intention, background, interpretation, aesthetic qualities and values.
Meaning intentions: psychological state-> utterance- spoken, written : utterance = meaningful -> gets meaning from intention.
Meaningful object -> sound/text/word/sentence/ and entity : not an action.
Meaning is what is preserved through translation - P.D. Juhl
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The computer poem means something different from the poets poem.
If computer spits out something has a different aesthetic merit or lacks aesthetic content and has not aesthetic merit. - Nelson Goodman
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An aesthetic difference between a fake and a masterpiece is not necessarily known just by looking at it.
Background information on whether something a fake or real affects what you see. - Walter Benjamin
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played with both politics and art.
Thought facism promoted in an aesthetic way.
Art in society
1. art tries to provide perspective on states of affairs by representing an overarching picture of place and time and the role it has in hierarchy.
2. Taking aspects of time, moment and render those things with a background in history and can only be understood through historical context.
Must have a background knowledge to feel the aura. - Thomasson
- The onthology of art- The question of arts definition- art exists in our heads.
- Weitz
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1. Representation (plato) imitation: too repstrictive.
Meaningfulness context (danto): too permissive, uninformative.
2. Signficant Form
a.Circular- therefore to permissive.
3.Emotion
a.Tolstoy– communication -> too restrictive.
b.Collingwood: clarification- process- too permissive : allows psychotherapy as an art form .
Concrete (painting sculpture); abstract (music, structural characteristics); mind independent (song my be independent of composer}; mind dependant mind dependance (intensive, creative actïƒ work can exist purely in the mind - Wittgenstein
- Philosphical investigation shows that the philosophical paradoxes theorize on what is necessary. Essence =essential.
- Art
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to be a work of art a piece must represent something. It is an imitation of reality. Art also often expresses or evokes emotion. Art is often characterized by beauty; it contains a notion of beauty through formal arrangements of elements. Art has perceptible attributes, characteristic, properties. It has some type of arrangement of visible, audible, perceptible properties that makes something a work of art.
Art has both external and extrinsic features: not only observable or visible, but the theory of art and the intention of the artists goes beyond purely visible. - Aesthetics
- Discipline and subject, the way art looks
- Philosophy
- discovery of the most fundamental structures of thought, language, logic and science. When Philosophy first noticed art it was in connection to the possibility of perception.
- Indiscernible Counterparts
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The main problem is the fact that art is representational. It resembles. The question is why is one thing art while the thing it represents is not.
If we look at Andy warhols brillo pads the brillo pads are art but the brillo pads in the store that he is representing are not.
Duchamp states that it is because it is what the artist chooses—it’s the artists intention that makes a piece a work of art.
Danto is the main philosopher of this concept. The two may look the same but the art must be different from the object it resembles—it has more meaning than just a replica of the object it is representing. A painting of a chair will have different significance than the chair that is being represented. - Representation
- For something to represent something else it must resemble/ imitate. It must embody certain characteristics of the object trying to be represented. Representation is a convention- it is the intention of the individual or the community.
- Aesthetic Emotion
- bells’ concept of aesthetic emotion is the idea of the perceptible qualities of the piece itself. It is disposed to produce in an audience the aesthetic emotion. It gives a certain effect and produces emotion in the viewer. Solubility tends to dissolve.
- Emotion in art (Collingwood, Bell, Tolstoy)
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Collingwood: Art expresses emotion. Collingwood believes that through explicating emotion one can reach clarification of that emotion and what is provoking that emotion.
Bell: what makes work a piece of art are the perceptible qualities. These qualities produce aesthetic emotion. To enjoy the aesthetics however one must appreciate the significant form- or the aesthetic qualities put into a piece of work: lines, colours, contours, shape, form etc.
Tolstoy: the communication of emotion is essential for art. The transmission of feelings to the audience so they feel the emotion. Tolstoy states that art may not be successful if it does not convey what the artist wants it to convey. It is successful if the art conveys the artists intent and communicates the artists thoughts. - Psychichal Distance
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bullough states that putting ones self away from all memories causes “interested viewing†thus causing emotional contact with the viewing subject. Disinterested or distanced viewing is a psychological state when a viewer is unappreciative of the work of art. They are not moved by the artistic work.
When one achieves psychilical distance there is a subjective response but one is capable of having all people.
It is believed that a critic cannot appreciate the work- they know too much about what they are looking at and logically cannot be critical because they are looking at it practically. - The Onthology of Art
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The Main premise is that art is in our heads. Art is an abstract concept and this brings up the question of whether art needs a definition or not. Art is metaphysical
Things get more abstract if they are repeatable. Mozart for example- many people play his songs but each time it is played it is different depending on the instrument and the person playing it- this makes it more abstract.
Paintings are therefore concrete because the representations and replicas of a piece of art are identical. Van Gogh can make a painting and the posters are exact representations of the work itself.