What Is Artistic About Taking Another Persons Piece of Art and Making It Ur Own
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Question of the Month
What is Art? and/or What is Beauty?
The following answers to this artful question each win a random book.
Fine art is something nosotros do, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, simply it is even more personal than that: it'southward almost sharing the way nosotros feel the world, which for many is an extension of personality. Information technology is the communication of intimate concepts that cannot be faithfully portrayed by words alone. And because words alone are not enough, we must find some other vehicle to carry our intent. But the content that we instill on or in our called media is not in itself the fine art. Art is to be found in how the media is used, the way in which the content is expressed.
What then is beauty? Dazzler is much more cosmetic: information technology is not about prettiness. There are plenty of pretty pictures available at the neighborhood home furnishing store; but these we might not refer to as beautiful; and it is non difficult to discover works of creative expression that we might agree are beautiful that are non necessarily pretty. Beauty is rather a measure of impact, a measure of emotion. In the context of fine art, beauty is the judge of successful communication between participants – the conveyance of a concept between the creative person and the perceiver. Cute art is successful in portraying the creative person's most profound intended emotions, the desired concepts, whether they be pretty and vivid, or nighttime and sinister. Merely neither the artist nor the observer can exist certain of successful advice in the end. And so beauty in art is eternally subjective.
Wm. Joseph Nieters, Lake Ozark, Missouri
Works of art may arm-twist a sense of wonder or cynicism, hope or despair, admiration or spite; the piece of work of art may be directly or complex, subtle or explicit, intelligible or obscure; and the subjects and approaches to the cosmos of art are bounded only by the imagination of the creative person. Consequently, I believe that defining art based upon its content is a doomed enterprise.
Now a theme in aesthetics, the study of fine art, is the claim that at that place is a disengagement or distance betwixt works of fine art and the flow of everyday life. Thus, works of art rise like islands from a current of more pragmatic concerns. When y'all step out of a river and onto an island, yous've reached your destination. Similarly, the aesthetic attitude requires you to treat artistic feel as an end-in-itself: art asks usa to arrive empty of preconceptions and attend to the mode in which we feel the work of art. And although a person can have an 'aesthetic experience' of a natural scene, flavor or texture, art is unlike in that information technology is produced. Therefore, art is the intentional advice of an feel as an end-in-itself. The content of that experience in its cultural context may determine whether the artwork is pop or ridiculed, significant or piddling, but information technology is art either way.
One of the initial reactions to this arroyo may be that information technology seems overly broad. An older brother who sneaks up backside his younger sibling and shouts "Booo!" tin be said to exist creating art. But isn't the difference between this and a Freddy Krueger pic merely one of degree? On the other hand, my definition would exclude graphics used in advertising or political propaganda, as they are created as a means to an finish and not for their own sakes. Furthermore, 'communication' is non the best word for what I have in mind because it implies an unwarranted intention about the content represented. Aesthetic responses are oft underdetermined by the creative person'south intentions.
Mike Mallory, Everett, WA
The fundamental difference betwixt fine art and dazzler is that art is near who has produced it, whereas beauty depends on who's looking.
Of course there are standards of beauty – that which is seen as 'traditionally' beautiful. The game changers – the foursquare pegs, so to speak – are those who saw traditional standards of beauty and decided specifically to go against them, peradventure just to prove a point. Take Picasso, Munch, Schoenberg, to name just three. They have fabricated a stand against these norms in their art. Otherwise their art is like all other art: its only function is to be experienced, appraised, and understood (or not).
Art is a ways to state an opinion or a feeling, or else to create a different view of the earth, whether it be inspired by the work of other people or something invented that's entirely new. Beauty is whatever attribute of that or anything else that makes an private feel positive or grateful. Beauty alone is non art, only art can be made of, about or for beautiful things. Dazzler can be plant in a snowy mountain scene: fine art is the photo of it shown to family, the oil interpretation of it hung in a gallery, or the music score recreating the scene in crotchets and quavers.
However, art is not necessarily positive: it can be deliberately hurtful or displeasing: it can make you think about or consider things that you would rather not. But if information technology evokes an emotion in you, then it is art.
Chiara Leonardi, Reading, Berks
Art is a way of grasping the world. Non merely the physical world, which is what science attempts to do; but the whole world, and specifically, the human world, the earth of club and spiritual experience.
Fine art emerged around l,000 years agone, long before cities and civilisation, all the same in forms to which we can still directly relate. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves, which so startled Picasso, take been carbon-dated at effectually 17,000 years erstwhile. Now, following the invention of photography and the devastating attack fabricated by Duchamp on the self-appointed Art Institution [come across Cursory Lives this result], fine art cannot be simply defined on the footing of concrete tests like 'fidelity of representation' or vague abstract concepts like 'beauty'. And then how tin we ascertain art in terms applying to both cave-dwellers and modern city sophisticates? To do this nosotros need to ask: What does fine art practise? And the respond is surely that it provokes an emotional, rather than a simply cognitive response. One way of budgeted the problem of defining art, then, could be to say: Art consists of shareable ideas that accept a shareable emotional impact. Art need not produce beautiful objects or events, since a dandy piece of art could validly arouse emotions other than those aroused by beauty, such equally terror, anxiety, or laughter. Still to derive an acceptable philosophical theory of art from this agreement means tackling the concept of 'emotion' head on, and philosophers accept been notoriously reluctant to do this. Merely not all of them: Robert Solomon'southward book The Passions (1993) has fabricated an excellent starting time, and this seems to me to exist the manner to go.
Information technology won't be easy. Poor old Richard Rorty was jumped on from a very great height when all he said was that literature, poetry, patriotism, love and stuff like that were philosophically important. Art is vitally important to maintaining broad standards in civilisation. Its pedigree long predates philosophy, which is but three,000 years quondam, and science, which is a mere 500 years one-time. Fine art deserves much more than attending from philosophers.
Alistair MacFarlane, Gwynedd
Some years agone I went looking for art. To begin my journey I went to an art gallery. At that stage fine art to me was whatever I plant in an art gallery. I found paintings, by and large, and because they were in the gallery I recognised them as art. A particular Rothko painting was one colour and large. I observed a further piece that did not have an obvious characterization. Information technology was also of i colour – white – and gigantically big, occupying ane consummate wall of the very high and spacious room and standing on modest roller wheels. On closer inspection I saw that information technology was a moveable wall, not a piece of fine art. Why could i piece of work exist considered 'art' and the other not?
The reply to the question could, peradventure, be institute in the criteria of Berys Gaut to decide if some artefact is, indeed, art – that art pieces function simply equally pieces of art, just as their creators intended.
But were they beautiful? Did they evoke an emotional response in me? Dazzler is frequently associated with art. At that place is sometimes an expectation of encountering a 'beautiful' object when going to meet a piece of work of art, be it painting, sculpture, book or functioning. Of course, that expectation quickly changes every bit one widens the range of installations encountered. The classic example is Duchamp's Fountain (1917), a rather united nations-beautiful urinal.
Can we define beauty? Let me effort by suggesting that dazzler is the capacity of an artefact to evoke a pleasurable emotional response. This might be categorised as the 'similar' response.
I definitely did non like Fountain at the initial level of appreciation. At that place was skill, of course, in its construction. But what was the skill in its presentation equally art?
And so I began to achieve a definition of art. A work of art is that which asks a question which a non-art object such as a wall does not: What am I? What am I communicating? The responses, both of the creator creative person and of the recipient audition, vary, merely they invariably involve a judgement, a response to the invitation to reply. The answer, too, goes towards deciphering that deeper question – the 'Who am I?' which goes towards defining humanity.
Neil Hallinan, Maynooth, Co. Kildare
'Art' is where we brand pregnant beyond language. Art consists in the making of pregnant through intelligent bureau, eliciting an artful response. It'southward a means of advice where language is non sufficient to explain or describe its content. Art can render visible and known what was previously unspoken. Because what art expresses and evokes is in part ineffable, we notice it difficult to define and delineate it. It is known through the feel of the audience as well equally the intention and expression of the artist. The meaning is made by all the participants, and and then can never exist fully known. It is multifarious and on-going. Even a disagreement is a tension which is itself an expression of something.
Fine art drives the development of a civilisation, both supporting the establishment and also preventing destructive messages from being silenced – art leads, mirrors and reveals change in politics and morality. Art plays a fundamental function in the creation of civilization, and is an outpouring of idea and ideas from it, and and so it cannot be fully understood in isolation from its context. Paradoxically, however, art can communicate beyond linguistic communication and time, highly-seasoned to our common humanity and linking disparate communities. Perchance if wider audiences engaged with a greater variety of the world's artistic traditions it could engender increased tolerance and common respect.
Another inescapable facet of art is that it is a commodity. This fact feeds the artistic process, whether motivating the artist to form an item of budgetary value, or to avoid creating ane, or to artistically commodify the aesthetic experience. The commodification of art also affects who is considered qualified to create fine art, comment on it, and even ascertain it, as those who benefit most strive to continue the value of 'art objects' high. These influences must feed into a culture's understanding of what art is at any time, making thoughts about art culturally dependent. However, this commodification and the consequent closely-guarded role of the fine art critic also gives rising to a counter culture within art culture, often expressed through the cosmos of art that cannot be sold. The stratification of art by value and the resultant tension also adds to its meaning, and the meaning of fine art to guild.
Catherine Bosley, Monk Soham, Suffolk
First of all we must recognize the obvious. 'Art' is a word, and words and concepts are organic and change their meaning through fourth dimension. So in the olden days, fine art meant arts and crafts. It was something yous could excel at through practice and hard work. Y'all learnt how to paint or sculpt, and yous learnt the special symbolism of your era. Through Romanticism and the nascence of individualism, art came to mean originality. To do something new and never-heard-of defined the artist. His or her personality became essentially as important as the artwork itself. During the era of Modernism, the search for originality led artists to reevaluate fine art. What could art practise? What could it correspond? Could y'all paint movement (Cubism, Futurism)? Could you paint the non-fabric (Abstract Expressionism)? Fundamentally: could anything be regarded equally art? A way of trying to solve this problem was to look beyond the piece of work itself, and focus on the art world: art was that which the establishment of art – artists, critics, fine art historians, etc – was prepared to regard every bit art, and which was made public through the institution, east.g. galleries. That's Institutionalism – made famous through Marcel Duchamp's fix-mades.
Institutionalism has been the prevailing notion through the subsequently role of the twentieth century, at least in academia, and I would say it nevertheless holds a house grip on our conceptions. One example is the Swedish artist Anna Odell. Her pic sequence Unknown woman 2009-349701, for which she faked psychosis to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, was widely debated, and past many was not regarded every bit art. But considering it was debated by the fine art globe, it succeeded in breaking into the art world, and is today regarded as art, and Odell is regarded an artist.
Of course there are those who endeavour and break out of this hegemony, for instance by refusing to play past the art globe'due south unwritten rules. Andy Warhol with his Factory was ane, fifty-fifty though he is today totally embraced by the art globe. Another example is Damien Hirst, who, much like Warhol, pays people to create the physical manifestations of his ideas. He doesn't use galleries and other art earth-approved arenas to advertise, and instead sells his objects directly to private individuals. This liberal arroyo to commercialism is ane way of attacking the hegemony of the art world.
What does all this teach us well-nigh art? Probably that fine art is a fleeting and chimeric concept. We will ever have art, but for the most part we will only actually larn in hindsight what the art of our era was.
Tommy Törnsten, Linköping, Sweden
Art periods such as Classical, Byzantine, neo-Classical, Romantic, Mod and mail service-Modern reverberate the irresolute nature of art in social and cultural contexts; and shifting values are axiomatic in varying content, forms and styles. These changes are encompassed, more than or less in sequence, by Imitationalist, Emotionalist, Expressivist, Formalist and Institutionalist theories of art. In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), Arthur Danto claims a distinctiveness for art that inextricably links its instances with acts of observation, without which all that could exist are 'material counterparts' or 'mere real things' rather than artworks. Even so the competing theories, works of art tin exist seen to possess 'family unit resemblances' or 'strands of resemblance' linking very different instances every bit art. Identifying instances of art is relatively straightforward, but a definition of fine art that includes all possible cases is elusive. Consequently, art has been claimed to be an 'open' concept.
Co-ordinate to Raymond Williams' Keywords (1976), capitalised 'Fine art' appears in general apply in the nineteenth century, with 'Fine Art'; whereas 'fine art' has a history of previous applications, such as in music, poetry, comedy, tragedy and trip the light fantastic; and nosotros should besides mention literature, media arts, fifty-fifty gardening, which for David Cooper in A Philosophy of Gardens (2006) can provide "epiphanies of co-dependence". Art, so, is perhaps "annihilation presented for our aesthetic contemplation" – a phrase coined by John Davies, former tutor at the Schoolhouse of Fine art Pedagogy, Birmingham, in 1971 – although 'anything' may seem too inclusive. Gaining our aesthetic interest is at to the lowest degree a necessary requirement of art. Sufficiency for something to be art requires significance to art appreciators which endures equally long as tokens or types of the artwork persist. Paradoxically, such significance is sometimes attributed to objects neither intended every bit fine art, nor especially intended to be perceived aesthetically – for case, votive, devotional, commemorative or commonsensical artefacts. Furthermore, artful interests can be eclipsed by dubious investment practices and social kudos. When combined with celebrity and harmful forms of narcissism, they can egregiously affect artistic authenticity. These interests can be overriding, and spawn products masquerading as art. And so information technology's upwards to discerning observers to spot any Fads, Fakes and Fantasies (Sjoerd Hannema, 1970).
Colin Brookes, Loughborough, Leicestershire
For me fine art is nothing more and nothing less than the creative ability of individuals to express their understanding of some aspect of individual or public life, similar dear, conflict, fear, or pain. As I read a state of war verse form by Edward Thomas, enjoy a Mozart piano concerto, or contemplate a M.C. Escher drawing, I am frequently emotionally inspired past the moment and intellectually stimulated by the thought-procedure that follows. At this moment of discovery I humbly realize my views may be those shared past thousands, even millions across the globe. This is due in large function to the mass media'south ability to command and exploit our emotions. The commercial success of a performance or production becomes the metric past which art is at present almost exclusively gauged: quality in art has been sadly reduced to equating not bad art with sale of books, number of views, or the downloading of recordings. Too bad if personal sensibilities virtually a particular slice of art are lost in the greater blitz for immediate acceptance.
And then where does that get out the subjective notion that beauty can still exist found in art? If beauty is the outcome of a process past which art gives pleasance to our senses, then it should remain a matter of personal discernment, even if outside forces clamour to have command of it. In other words, nobody, including the art critic, should exist able to tell the individual what is beautiful and what is not. The earth of fine art is one of a abiding tension between preserving private tastes and promoting popular credence.
Ian Malcomson, Victoria, British Columbia
What nosotros perceive as beautiful does non offend us on whatsoever level. Information technology is a personal judgement, a subjective opinion. A memory from once we gazed upon something cute, a sight e'er so pleasing to the senses or to the eye, ofttimes time stays with us forever. I shall never forget walking into Balzac'south house in France: the scent of lilies was so overwhelming that I had a numinous moment. The intensity of the emotion evoked may not be possible to explain. I don't experience information technology'south of import to argue why I think a bloom, painting, sunset or how the light streaming through a stained-glass window is beautiful. The power of the sights create an emotional reaction in me. I don't expect or business myself that others will hold with me or not. Can all agree that an act of kindness is beautiful?
A thing of beauty is a whole; elements coming together making it so. A single castor stroke of a painting does non alone create the impact of beauty, but all together, it becomes beautiful. A perfect blossom is beautiful, when all of the petals together form its perfection; a pleasant, intoxicating scent is also part of the beauty.
In thinking about the question, 'What is beauty?', I've but come abroad with the idea that I am the beholder whose eye it is in. Suffice it to say, my private cess of what strikes me as beautiful is all I demand to know.
Cheryl Anderson, Kenilworth, Illinois
Stendhal said, "Dazzler is the promise of happiness", but this didn't get to the centre of the matter. Whose beauty are we talking about? Whose happiness?
Consider if a ophidian made fine art. What would it believe to be beautiful? What would information technology deign to make? Snakes have poor eyesight and detect the world largely through a chemosensory organ, the Jacobson'due south organ, or through heat-sensing pits. Would a moving picture in its human being class even brand sense to a ophidian? And so their art, their beauty, would be entirely alien to ours: information technology would not be visual, and even if they had songs they would be foreign; after all, snakes exercise not have ears, they sense vibrations. So fine fine art would exist sensed, and songs would be felt, if it is even possible to excogitate that thought.
From this perspective – a view low to the basis – nosotros can see that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. It may cross our lips to speak of the nature of dazzler in billowy language, but we practice and so entirely with a forked tongue if we do so seriously. The aesthetics of representing beauty ought non to fool u.s. into thinking beauty, as some abstract concept, truly exists. It requires a viewer and a context, and the value we place on sure combinations of colors or sounds over others speaks of nothing more than preference. Our desire for pictures, moving or otherwise, is because our organs developed in such a way. A ophidian would have no apply for the visual globe.
I am thankful to have human fine art over snake fine art, just I would no doubt exist amazed at serpentine art. It would crave an intellectual sloughing of many conceptions nosotros take for granted. For that, considering the possibility of this extreme thought is worthwhile: if snakes could write poetry, what would information technology exist?
Derek Halm, Portland, Oregon
[A: Sssibilance and sussssuration – Ed.]
The questions, 'What is art?' and 'What is beauty?' are unlike types and shouldn't be conflated.
With deadening predictability, almost all gimmicky discussers of fine art lapse into a 'relative-off', whereby they go to abrasive lengths to demonstrate how open up-minded they are and how ineluctably loose the concept of art is. If art is merely any yous want it to be, can we not just stop the conversation there? It'southward a done deal. I'll throw playdough on to a sail, and we can pretend to display our modern credentials of acceptance and insight. This merely doesn't work, and we all know it. If fine art is to mean anything, there has to be some working definition of what it is. If fine art can be anything to everyone at anytime, and then there ends the discussion. What makes art special – and worth discussing – is that it stands to a higher place or outside everyday things, such as everyday food, paintwork, or sounds. Fine art comprises special or exceptional dishes, paintings, and music.
And so what, and then, is my definition of art? Briefly, I believe there must exist at least two considerations to label something as 'art'. The offset is that there must be something recognizable in the way of 'author-to-audience reception'. I mean to say, there must exist the recognition that something was made for an audience of some kind to receive, discuss or enjoy. Implicit in this point is the evident recognizability of what the art actually is – in other words, the writer doesn't have to tell y'all it's art when y'all otherwise wouldn't take any thought. The 2nd point is simply the recognition of skill: some obvious skill has to be involved in making art. This, in my view, would be the minimum requirements – or definition – of art. Even if you disagree with the particulars, some definition is required to make anything at all art. Otherwise, what are we fifty-fifty discussing? I'm breaking the mold and ask for brass tacks.
Brannon McConkey, Tennessee
Writer of Pupil of Life: Why Becoming Engaged in Life, Art, and Philosophy Can Lead to a Happier Existence
Human beings appear to have a coercion to categorize, to organize and define. We seek to impose order on a welter of sense-impressions and memories, seeing regularities and patterns in repetitions and associations, always on the sentinel for correlations, eager to determine cause and effect, so that we might give sense to what might otherwise seem random and inconsequential. However, especially in the last century, we have also learned to accept pleasure in the reflection of unstructured perceptions; our artistic means of seeing and listening accept expanded to encompass disharmony and irregularity. This has meant that culturally, an ever-widening gap has grown between the attitudes and opinions of the majority, who go along to define art in traditional ways, having to do with order, harmony, representation; and the minority, who look for originality, who attempt to come across the world anew, and strive for difference, and whose critical practice is rooted in abstraction. In betwixt there are many who abjure both extremes, and who both discover and give pleasure both in defining a personal vision and in practising adroitness.
There will always exist a challenge to traditional concepts of art from the shock of the new, and tensions around the appropriateness of our understanding. That is how things should exist, as innovators push at the boundaries. At the same time, nosotros will go on to accept pleasure in the dazzler of a mathematical equation, a finely-tuned car, a successful scientific experiment, the technology of landing a probe on a comet, an accomplished verse form, a striking portrait, the sound-world of a symphony. Nosotros apportion significance and meaning to what nosotros notice of value and wish to share with our fellows. Our art and our definitions of dazzler reflect our homo nature and the multiplicity of our creative efforts.
In the terminate, because of our individuality and our varied histories and traditions, our debates will ever exist inconclusive. If we are wise, nosotros will look and listen with an open spirit, and sometimes with a wry smile, always celebrating the diversity of man imaginings and achievements.
David Howard, Church Stretton, Shropshire
Next Question of the Month
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Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/What_is_Art_and_or_What_is_Beauty
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