Creating Art Work Refer to Personal Experiences or Preferences Relate to
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Question of the Month
What is Fine art? and/or What is Beauty?
The following answers to this artful question each win a random volume.
Art is something we practice, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, but information technology is even more personal than that: information technology's well-nigh sharing the way we experience the world, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the communication of intimate concepts that cannot be faithfully portrayed past words alone. And because words alone are not enough, we must find some other vehicle to carry our intent. Simply the content that we instill on or in our chosen media is not in itself the art. Art is to exist found in how the media is used, the way in which the content is expressed.
What then is beauty? Beauty is much more than corrective: it is not about prettiness. There are plenty of pretty pictures available at the neighborhood abode furnishing store; but these we might not refer to every bit beautiful; and it is not hard to find works of artistic expression that nosotros might agree are cute that are not necessarily pretty. Beauty is rather a measure of touch, a measure out of emotion. In the context of art, beauty is the gauge of successful communication between participants – the conveyance of a concept between the creative person and the perceiver. Beautiful art is successful in portraying the artist'south most profound intended emotions, the desired concepts, whether they be pretty and brilliant, or dark and sinister. Just neither the artist nor the observer can be certain of successful communication in the end. And then dazzler in art is eternally subjective.
Wm. Joseph Nieters, Lake Ozark, Missouri
Works of art may elicit a sense of wonder or cynicism, promise or despair, adoration or spite; the work of art may exist direct or complex, subtle or explicit, intelligible or obscure; and the subjects and approaches to the creation of art are divisional only by the imagination of the artist. Consequently, I believe that defining art based upon its content is a doomed enterprise.
Now a theme in aesthetics, the study of art, is the merits that at that place is a detachment or distance betwixt works of art and the menstruum of everyday life. Thus, works of art ascension like islands from a electric current of more pragmatic concerns. When yous step out of a river and onto an island, you've reached your destination. Similarly, the artful attitude requires you to treat artistic experience as an end-in-itself: art asks us to go far empty of preconceptions and attend to the way in which we feel the work of art. And although a person tin can take an 'aesthetic experience' of a natural scene, flavor or texture, fine art is dissimilar in that it is produced. Therefore, art is the intentional communication of an experience as an terminate-in-itself. The content of that experience in its cultural context may determine whether the artwork is pop or ridiculed, pregnant or trivial, simply it is fine art either style.
1 of the initial reactions to this approach may be that it seems overly broad. An older brother who sneaks up behind his younger sibling and shouts "Booo!" tin can be said to exist creating art. Only isn't the difference betwixt this and a Freddy Krueger movie just ane of degree? On the other manus, my definition would exclude graphics used in advertising or political propaganda, equally they are created as a means to an end and non for their own sakes. Furthermore, 'advice' is non the best word for what I have in heed because information technology implies an unwarranted intention about the content represented. Artful responses are often underdetermined by the artist'due south intentions.
Mike Mallory, Everett, WA
The cardinal difference between art and beauty is that fine art is about who has produced it, whereas dazzler depends on who'due south looking.
Of grade there are standards of dazzler – that which is seen as 'traditionally' cute. The game changers – the square pegs, and so to speak – are those who saw traditional standards of beauty and decided specifically to go against them, perhaps just to prove a bespeak. Accept Picasso, Munch, Schoenberg, to name just three. They have fabricated a stand confronting these norms in their art. Otherwise their art is like all other fine art: its merely 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 globe, whether information technology exist inspired by the work of other people or something invented that's entirely new. Dazzler is whatsoever aspect of that or anything else that makes an individual experience positive or grateful. Beauty lone is not fine art, just fine art can be made of, about or for beautiful things. Beauty can be found 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.
Notwithstanding, 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 it evokes an emotion in you lot, then it is fine art.
Chiara Leonardi, Reading, Berks
Art is a way of grasping the earth. Non merely the concrete world, which is what scientific discipline attempts to do; just the whole world, and specifically, the human world, the globe of social club and spiritual experience.
Fine art emerged around l,000 years ago, long earlier cities and civilization, yet in forms to which nosotros can still directly relate. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves, which and so startled Picasso, have been carbon-dated at around 17,000 years old. Now, post-obit the invention of photography and the devastating set on made by Duchamp on the self-appointed Art Establishment [come across Brief Lives this result], art cannot be simply defined on the basis of concrete tests like 'fidelity of representation' or vague abstract concepts like 'beauty'. So how can we define art in terms applying to both cave-dwellers and modern metropolis sophisticates? To do this we demand to ask: What does fine art practice? And the respond is surely that it provokes an emotional, rather than a simply cognitive response. 1 way of budgeted the problem of defining art, then, could exist to say: Art consists of shareable ideas that have a shareable emotional impact. Art need non produce beautiful objects or events, since a great piece of art could validly arouse emotions other than those aroused by beauty, such equally terror, anxiety, or laughter. Yet to derive an adequate philosophical theory of art from this understanding means tackling the concept of 'emotion' head on, and philosophers accept been notoriously reluctant to do this. Only not all of them: Robert Solomon's book The Passions (1993) has made an excellent outset, and this seems to me to be the way to go.
It won't be like shooting fish in a barrel. Poor old Richard Rorty was jumped on from a very great height when all he said was that literature, poetry, patriotism, love and stuff similar that were philosophically important. Art is vitally of import to maintaining wide standards in civilisation. Its pedigree long predates philosophy, which is only three,000 years old, and scientific discipline, which is a mere 500 years old. Art deserves much more than attending from philosophers.
Alistair MacFarlane, Gwynedd
Some years ago I went looking for art. To begin my journeying I went to an art gallery. At that stage fine art to me was whatever I establish in an art gallery. I found paintings, by and large, and because they were in the gallery I recognised them equally fine art. A particular Rothko painting was one colour and large. I observed a further slice that did not have an obvious characterization. It was also of one colour – white – and gigantically large, occupying i complete wall of the very loftier and spacious room and standing on small roller wheels. On closer inspection I saw that it was a moveable wall, not a piece of art. Why could ane piece of piece of work be considered 'fine art' and the other not?
The answer to the question could, possibly, exist found in the criteria of Berys Gaut to decide if some artefact is, indeed, art – that art pieces function only every bit pieces of art, just as their creators intended.
Merely were they beautiful? Did they evoke an emotional response in me? Beauty is frequently associated with art. There is sometimes an expectation of encountering a 'beautiful' object when going to encounter a work of art, be it painting, sculpture, book or functioning. Of course, that expectation speedily changes as ane widens the range of installations encountered. The classic instance is Duchamp'due south Fountain (1917), a rather un-beautiful urinal.
Can we define beauty? Permit me try by suggesting that dazzler is the capacity of an artefact to evoke a pleasurable emotional response. This might exist categorised as the 'similar' response.
I definitely did not like Fountain at the initial level of appreciation. At that place was skill, of course, in its construction. Just what was the skill in its presentation as art?
So I began to reach a definition of art. A piece of work of art is that which asks a question which a not-fine art object such as a wall does not: What am I? What am I communicating? The responses, both of the creator artist and of the recipient audition, vary, just they invariably involve a judgement, a response to the invitation to reply. The respond, besides, goes towards deciphering that deeper question – the 'Who am I?' which goes towards defining humanity.
Neil Hallinan, Maynooth, Co. Kildare
'Fine art' is where we make significant beyond linguistic communication. Art consists in the making of pregnant through intelligent agency, eliciting an aesthetic response. It'south a means of advice where linguistic communication is not sufficient to explain or draw its content. Fine art can render visible and known what was previously unspoken. Because what art expresses and evokes is in role ineffable, we observe information technology difficult to define and delineate it. Information technology is known through the experience of the audience as well as the intention and expression of the artist. The meaning is made by all the participants, and so 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 besides preventing subversive messages from beingness silenced – fine art leads, mirrors and reveals change in politics and morality. Art plays a central part in the creation of culture, and is an outpouring of thought and ideas from it, and and then information technology cannot be fully understood in isolation from its context. Paradoxically, however, art can communicate beyond language and time, appealing to our common humanity and linking disparate communities. Perhaps if wider audiences engaged with a greater variety of the world'south artistic traditions it could engender increased tolerance and mutual respect.
Another inescapable facet of art is that it is a commodity. This fact feeds the creative process, whether motivating the artist to grade an particular of budgetary value, or to avoid creating one, or to artistically commodify the aesthetic experience. The commodification of fine art also affects who is considered qualified to create fine art, comment on it, and even define it, equally those who benefit most strive to proceed the value of 'fine art objects' high. These influences must feed into a culture'south agreement of what art is at whatsoever time, making thoughts about fine art culturally dependent. However, this commodification and the consequent closely-guarded office of the fine art critic also gives rise to a counter civilisation inside fine art civilisation, often expressed through the creation of art that cannot be sold. The stratification of fine art by value and the resultant tension also adds to its meaning, and the pregnant of fine art to society.
Catherine Bosley, Monk Soham, Suffolk
Start of all we must recognize the obvious. 'Art' is a word, and words and concepts are organic and modify their meaning through time. So in the olden days, art meant craft. Information technology was something yous could excel at through exercise and hard work. You learnt how to paint or sculpt, and you learnt the special symbolism of your era. Through Romanticism and the birth of individualism, art came to mean originality. To do something new and never-heard-of divers the creative person. His or her personality became substantially every bit of import as the artwork itself. During the era of Modernism, the search for originality led artists to reevaluate art. What could art do? What could it correspond? Could you pigment movement (Cubism, Futurism)? Could you paint the non-material (Abstract Expressionism)? Fundamentally: could anything be regarded as art? A way of trying to solve this problem was to look beyond the work itself, and focus on the art world: art was that which the institution of art – artists, critics, art historians, etc – was prepared to regard every bit art, and which was fabricated public through the institution, east.thousand. galleries. That'southward Institutionalism – fabricated famous through Marcel Duchamp'due south prepare-mades.
Institutionalism has been the prevailing notion through the later office of the twentieth century, at to the lowest degree in academia, and I would say it nonetheless holds a firm grip on our conceptions. One example is the Swedish artist Anna Odell. Her film sequence Unknown woman 2009-349701, for which she faked psychosis to be admitted to a psychiatric infirmary, was widely debated, and by many was not regarded as fine art. But considering it was debated past the fine art world, it succeeded in breaking into the art globe, and is today regarded equally art, and Odell is regarded an creative person.
Of form there are those who effort and break out of this hegemony, for instance by refusing to play past the art world'due south unwritten rules. Andy Warhol with his Factory was ane, even though he is today totally embraced by the art globe. Another case 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 world-approved arenas to annunciate, and instead sells his objects directly to private individuals. This liberal approach to commercialism is 1 fashion of attacking the hegemony of the art world.
What does all this teach the states about art? Probably that fine art is a fleeting and chimeric concept. We will always have fine art, simply for the most part we volition only really learn in retrospect what the art of our era was.
Tommy Törnsten, Linköping, Sweden
Art periods such equally Classical, Byzantine, neo-Classical, Romantic, Modern and post-Modern reverberate the changing nature of art in social and cultural contexts; and shifting values are evident in varying content, forms and styles. These changes are encompassed, more or less in sequence, by Imitationalist, Emotionalist, Expressivist, Formalist and Institutionalist theories of fine 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 'fabric counterparts' or 'mere existent things' rather than artworks. Notwithstanding the competing theories, works of art can be seen to possess 'family resemblances' or 'strands of resemblance' linking very dissimilar instances equally art. Identifying instances of art is relatively straightforward, merely a definition of art that includes all possible cases is elusive. Consequently, fine art has been claimed to be an 'open up' concept.
According to Raymond Williams' Keywords (1976), capitalised 'Art' appears in general use in the nineteenth century, with 'Fine Art'; whereas 'art' has a history of previous applications, such as in music, poetry, comedy, tragedy and dance; and we should also mention literature, media arts, even gardening, which for David Cooper in A Philosophy of Gardens (2006) tin can provide "epiphanies of co-dependence". Art, and so, is perhaps "anything presented for our aesthetic contemplation" – a phrase coined by John Davies, sometime tutor at the School of Art Education, Birmingham, in 1971 – although 'anything' may seem also inclusive. Gaining our aesthetic interest is at least a necessary requirement of art. Sufficiency for something to be art requires significance to art appreciators which endures as long as tokens or types of the artwork persist. Paradoxically, such significance is sometimes attributed to objects neither intended equally fine art, nor particularly intended to be perceived aesthetically – for case, votive, devotional, commemorative or utilitarian artefacts. Furthermore, aesthetic interests tin be eclipsed by dubious investment practices and social kudos. When combined with celebrity and harmful forms of narcissism, they can egregiously affect artistic actuality. These interests can be overriding, and spawn products masquerading as art. Then information technology's upward to discerning observers to spot any Fads, Fakes and Fantasies (Sjoerd Hannema, 1970).
Colin Brookes, Loughborough, Leicestershire
For me fine art is nix more than and nothing less than the creative ability of individuals to express their agreement of some aspect of individual or public life, like love, disharmonize, fearfulness, or hurting. As I read a war poem by Edward Thomas, enjoy a Mozart piano concerto, or contemplate a Thou.C. Escher drawing, I am often emotionally inspired by the moment and intellectually stimulated by the idea-process that follows. At this moment of discovery I humbly realize my views may exist those shared by thousands, even millions beyond the globe. This is due in large part to the mass media's ability to control and exploit our emotions. The commercial success of a operation or production becomes the metric by which art is now almost exclusively gauged: quality in art has been sadly reduced to equating slap-up art with sale of books, number of views, or the downloading of recordings. Too bad if personal sensibilities nearly a particular slice of fine art are lost in the greater rush for immediate credence.
So where does that exit the subjective notion that beauty can however exist found in fine art? If dazzler is the outcome of a process by which art gives pleasure to our senses, and then it should remain a matter of personal discernment, fifty-fifty if exterior forces clamour to accept control of information technology. In other words, nobody, including the art critic, should be able to tell the individual what is beautiful and what is non. The world of art is one of a constant tension between preserving individual tastes and promoting pop credence.
Ian Malcomson, Victoria, British Columbia
What nosotros perceive as cute does non offend us on any level. It is a personal judgement, a subjective opinion. A memory from once we gazed upon something cute, a sight e'er and then pleasing to the senses or to the eye, often time stays with us forever. I shall never forget walking into Balzac'due 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 feel it's important to debate why I recollect a bloom, painting, sunset or how the low-cal streaming through a stained-glass window is beautiful. The ability of the sights create an emotional reaction in me. I don't expect or concern myself that others will agree with me or not. Can all concur that an deed of kindness is beautiful?
A matter of dazzler is a whole; elements coming together making it and then. A single castor stroke of a painting does not lonely create the touch of beauty, merely all together, it becomes beautiful. A perfect bloom is cute, when all of the petals together form its perfection; a pleasant, intoxicating olfactory property is also part of the beauty.
In thinking about the question, 'What is beauty?', I've just come away with the idea that I am the beholder whose heart information technology is in. Suffice it to say, my private cess of what strikes me as beautiful is all I need to know.
Cheryl Anderson, Kenilworth, Illinois
Stendhal said, "Dazzler is the promise of happiness", but this didn't get to the center of the matter. Whose beauty are we talking nearly? Whose happiness?
Consider if a snake made fine art. What would it believe to be cute? What would it condescend to make? Snakes have poor eyesight and discover the globe largely through a chemosensory organ, the Jacobson's organ, or through heat-sensing pits. Would a movie in its human form even brand sense to a ophidian? Then their art, their beauty, would exist entirely alien to ours: it would not be visual, and even if they had songs they would exist foreign; later on all, snakes do non take ears, they sense vibrations. So art would be sensed, and songs would be felt, if information technology is even possible to conceive that idea.
From this perspective – a view low to the basis – nosotros can run across that dazzler is truly in the centre of the beholder. It may cross our lips to speak of the nature of beauty in billowy language, just we do so entirely with a forked tongue if we practice and so seriously. The aesthetics of representing beauty ought not to fool the states into thinking beauty, every bit some abstruse concept, truly exists. It requires a viewer and a context, and the value nosotros place on certain combinations of colors or sounds over others speaks of zip more than preference. Our desire for pictures, moving or otherwise, is because our organs developed in such a fashion. A snake would have no utilise for the visual globe.
I am thankful to have man art over snake art, but I would no dubiety exist amazed at serpentine fine art. It would require an intellectual sloughing of many conceptions we have for granted. For that, considering the possibility of this farthermost idea is worthwhile: if snakes could write poesy, what would it be?
Derek Halm, Portland, Oregon
[A: Sssibilance and sussssuration – Ed.]
The questions, 'What is art?' and 'What is dazzler?' are different types and shouldn't be conflated.
With wearisome predictability, near all contemporary discussers of art lapse into a 'relative-off', whereby they go to annoying lengths to demonstrate how open up-minded they are and how ineluctably loose the concept of art is. If art is just whatever you want it to be, tin can we not but stop the conversation there? It'due south a done deal. I'll throw playdough on to a canvas, and we can pretend to display our modernistic credentials of acceptance and insight. This just doesn't piece of work, and we all know it. If art is to mean anything, there has to exist some working definition of what it is. If art can exist anything to anybody at anytime, then there ends the word. What makes art special – and worth discussing – is that it stands above or exterior everyday things, such as everyday food, paintwork, or sounds. Fine art comprises special or exceptional dishes, paintings, and music.
So what, then, is my definition of fine art? Briefly, I believe at that place must be at least ii considerations to characterization something as 'art'. The first is that there must exist something recognizable in the way of 'author-to-audience reception'. I mean to say, there must be the recognition that something was fabricated for an audience of some kind to receive, discuss or enjoy. Implicit in this indicate is the evident recognizability of what the art actually is – in other words, the author doesn't have to tell you lot it's fine art when you otherwise wouldn't have any thought. The second betoken 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 even discussing? I'one thousand breaking the mold and ask for contumely tacks.
Brannon McConkey, Tennessee
Author of Pupil of Life: Why Becoming Engaged in Life, Fine art, and Philosophy Tin can Lead to a Happier Existence
Human being beings appear to take a compulsion to categorize, to organize and ascertain. We seek to impose order on a welter of sense-impressions and memories, seeing regularities and patterns in repetitions and associations, always on the lookout for correlations, eager to determine cause and effect, and then that we might give sense to what might otherwise seem random and inconsequential. However, particularly in the terminal century, nosotros have also learned to take pleasure in the reflection of unstructured perceptions; our artistic ways of seeing and listening accept expanded to comprehend disharmony and irregularity. This has meant that culturally, an always-widening gap has grown between the attitudes and opinions of the majority, who continue to ascertain art in traditional ways, having to do with society, harmony, representation; and the minority, who look for originality, who endeavour to come across the world afresh, and strive for difference, and whose critical do is rooted in abstraction. In between there are many who abjure both extremes, and who both find and requite pleasure both in defining a personal vision and in practising craftsmanship.
In that location volition always be a challenge to traditional concepts of art from the daze of the new, and tensions around the appropriateness of our agreement. That is how things should exist, equally innovators push button at the boundaries. At the aforementioned time, we volition continue to take pleasance in the beauty of a mathematical equation, a finely-tuned auto, a successful scientific experiment, the technology of landing a probe on a comet, an achieved poem, a striking portrait, the sound-globe of a symphony. We apportion significance and meaning to what we observe of value and wish to share with our fellows. Our art and our definitions of beauty reflect our man nature and the multiplicity of our creative efforts.
In the finish, considering of our individuality and our varied histories and traditions, our debates will ever be inconclusive. If we are wise, we volition look and listen with an open spirit, and sometimes with a wry smile, always celebrating the multifariousness of human imaginings and achievements.
David Howard, Church building Stretton, Shropshire
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Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/What_is_Art_and_or_What_is_Beauty
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