What might a Davidsonian aesthetic look like? — Banno

"The painting on the wall, named, can be described in the following ways... (10 pages later)" is True IFF The painting....




That's been one of the questions I've been trying to answer in talking with @J; there's the sense in which I know there's something there, because it's been there for a long time. It's art so even if we say people were "bamboozled", it's still this phenomena that, like it or not, one must contend with when doing philosophy of art.

If we exclude it then what does that say about other works of art? On what basis are we including?

For my part I take the stance that there's something I'm missing. I've gone to plenty of modern art museums out of curiosity, and some of the installations/videos/etc. really just left me mystified. I was willing to look just to see, but sometimes I sort of just shrugged.

Which usually means I'm missing something -- what is it about this that so many other people like that I'm not seeing?

Trouble is, the custodians would not call it art. — Banno

What would they call it?

And we can further insist that "seeing" retain its metaphorical meaning, that it doesn't have to be retinal, but can instead be the kind of seeing we mean when we say, "Ah, now I see!" — J

Yes, definitely.

Another way to put -- or at least a different way to get to a similar idea -- the notion of aesthetic attitudes are ways of seeing-as. So we are looking at the painting as a painting: or, to not use the visual metaphor, we have judged something a painting which is different from the wall it hangs upon. We see the wall and the painting but I don't see the wall as a painting.

OK, let's call that special way of seeing an act of judgment. And let's agree that there's no "innocent eye," no "brain-off" way of looking at paintings. Still, we need to explain the important difference Duchamp is pointing to. If I understand him, he's saying that the Warhol exists in order to stimulate thought, whereas the Monet is an object of contemplation in its own right -- or something like that. Now we need a lot of conceptual apparatus to see either of these paintings in the right way; that's not in dispute. But conceptual art uses the image in a way that traditional painting does not. The soup cans have to function as a bridge to the concept, otherwise the artwork fails. Whereas the water lilies don't insist on this kind of move. — J

OK this helps me to wrap my brain around the idea of conceptual art better, then. It's always something I've struggled to understand -- Surrealism, Dada, Pop Art I could make sense of but whenever someone would say their a conceptual artist it simply eluded me what that could possibly mean.

What's of particular help is the contrast class -- the conceptual art is somehow supposed to be different from this "older" way of looking at the function of paintings.

My skepticism arises because of a general skepticism of concepts being separate from our ability to experience as enlanguaged beings at all. There was never an escape from the concepts to begin with, it's all conceptual art.

But then this sounds something like an overgeneralization in the face of your description here -- the classic function of painting vs. the conceptual function of painting.

What could that mean, if not that it must participate in some game in which we call it art? — Banno

I agree with that, but then the question turns to -- what are the rules of this game? For whom and when? What does this tell us about what we think art is?

There is a community who claim continuity with the Murujuga artists... — Banno

Cool -- that would add to the evidence against any skeptic, insofar that they took the institutional theory of art seriously, about its categorical placement -- "is art".

Though even if there weren't I'd still be inclined to call that art even if I was disconnected from that history -- I'd want to know more to understand, but "on its face" that looks like art to me in a fairly unproblematic manner.

The artist's intention to create "a piece of art" will not suffice - They might be rubbish at their supposed profession. — Banno

The first statement I agree with, but not the justification. If they make bad art they're still an artist, categorically -- it's just bad art, and they are, by that standard of "bad" at least, a bad artist.

It does have to be recognizably art in some sense -- part of what makes some of these examples poignant is that their creators have demonstrated their ability to follow technique, but they're wanting to say something about art as a whole after having demonstrated their ability in the traditional ways.

There's no way we can enter into the intent of the artists; too long ago, too far removed from us, now...? — Banno

Hrrm... it might depend upon further evidence, but I'm hesitant to say no way. It'd be a stretch, though, and take a lot of careful work and humility along the way (recognizing just how out there that is to try and determine the intent of someone so long ago without any evidence aside from the work itself). One thing we might say here is that we don't have a good clue what the intent was, but it seems like there was still an artist for all that -- some person a long time ago tried to do something like what we call art. What their artistic concerns were is hard to say, I'll admit, but I'd say that's more of an interpretative device that we can use rather than something which is part of what makes the painting a painting. I'd rather say it requires a creator. And perhaps an audience of 1, the artist, is enough, but I do think there being an audience is important.

But by that criteria I'd say this still fits, and is a good example of art not curated within a museum. But here we're very much left wondering much more than other artworks, of course.

It's ok, they are going to build gas export facilities over the top of them, so they won't annoy the anthropologists and art historians. — Banno

Seriously? That's terrible.

I read the wikipedia page on Duchamp's Fountain.

The final quote helps me to understand what he means by "conceptual" art because he contrasts it with "retinal" art:

Pop Art is a return to "conceptual" painting, virtually abandoned, except by the Surrealists, since Courbet, in favor of retinal painting... If you take a Campbell soup can and repeat it 50 times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell soup cans on a canvas. — Duchamp, 1964

It seems to me that he wants interpretation -- so the story behind the artwork, the motivations around it, the whole context of the chosen/found artwork -- to offer the difference between art/not-art. So basically what we've been saying with respect to the idea of an artworld, though it seems to me that Duchamp places the "dubbing" not on the side of the committee's -- I was interested to read that Fountain wasn't displayed when it was originally submitted! -- but on the part of the artist making a choice that this is what art is: Not technique, but the act of choosing something as art to be submitted as art.

Something I wonder about this is how is retinal art not-conceptual? I'd say that he's just using different formal categories of evaluation in light of an artworld, not that the retinal painting is non-conceptual. I can ask why someone wants to put anything on an anything, and in fact must in order to speak about art at all.

It's that act of judgment that seems to me to differentiate art/not-art -- but, in being an act of judgment, it seems just as conceptual whether I'm asking "Why 50 campbell's soup cans?" or "What does Monet mean by his water lillies?"


****

I can sort of see how there can be a 'brain off" way of looking at paintings; but even then it seems we have to have some conceptual machinery to even want to look at something that is a painting different from the wall it sits upon.

I went to the BBC's website and it seems that the lectures weren't being hosted anymore.

What is/are the purpose(s) of art? On the spectrum between self-expression (personal) and communication (collective), can it "go too far" in one or the other direction? If a poem falls in the forest and there's no one there to read it, is it still a poem? — J

I'm hesitant to justify art by its purposes. If anything I think it's entirely useless, and that's sort of the point. Rather than there being functions which art fulfills it can fulfill any function we want -- so a pot, though a useful item, can at the same time be a work of art. But in judging the pot as a work of art I am not concerned with its utility -- a pot in a museum from some ancient time is interesting because of when it was made and what it might mean for the history of art and ourselves, not because it's good at carrying water.

But that "what it might mean" is the sort of thing I think we're making up, and so it's not strictly some purpose which art serves but rather art is a human activity which we pursue for itself -- much like philosophy, and a good deal of science too.

I wouldn't want to put it in terms of self-expression(personal)/communication (collective) -- art being the sort of activity which emphasizes the importance of both in conjunct to the production of art. We're drawn to an individual artist, and we are able to talk about said individual artist due to collective understandings of the norms, which in turn serve as a basis for new creations as artists challenge those norms in interesting ways.

Also, a general caution for family resemblance -- I like that concept a lot for tamping down the desire for universal and necessary conditions as a foolhardy quest.

But we can't just point to it in making a family resemblance theory as if the work is over. There's still the work of specifying that family resemblance, which is surely where the debate has been more focused if we're dealing with a phenomena better thought of as a family resemblance. (i.e. it was the philosophers who were wrong to seek out universal/sufficient conditions of painting, but there's still philosophy to be done)

Is it still art if no one sees it that way (except the creator)? Should we say, "intentionally attempts to create art"? — J

This is one of those perhaps odd consequences of accepting the institutional theory of art -- Van Gogh's paintings that were not known but found later were not art before they were found, even though they were painted by Van Gogh!

I'm not sure it can be a red rectangle in a mathematical sense, at least -- but if all we mean is something we see that's roughly shaped like a rectangle then I could read it as a red rectangle.

I was just wondering yesterday if someone were to paint a three-dimensional shape as part of the painting would that still be a painting? I was beginning to wonder if part of what makes paintings and drawings paintings or drawings is that they are in 2-dimensional space. Even if we take a three dimensional object and paint it: would the painting be the object underneath the paint, or the paint itself? if just the paint itself then we could still see the surface as a 2-dimensional space where the artwork lies, but expressed on a three dimensional object to point out -- perhaps -- that canvas is not a necessary feature of paintings which are art.

Which I think helps me think through the example here: The object is the wall and the desire is to change the color of the wall for this or that non-artistic reason. While there's a certain technique to doing a good paintjob -- namely in getting an even coat, unlike our sample at the moment, which doesn't draw attention to itself and seals itself well to the walls so that the paint doesn't peal -- but even the painter wouldn't say it's art (unless it was a particularly good paint job, perhaps, that they're proud of)



*****


On the multiplicity of artworlds:

I can see the museum and the coffeeshop as having slightly different criteria -- namely to do with whether it's canonical or not -- but they share the common artworld of painting I think.

So not just locations, but even mediums can give rise to different artworlds.

In truth, the actual reaction would probably be a rolling of the eyes, because that kind of gesture has been done before, and would be seen as trite and cliche. But again, those reactions, "trite" and "cliche", are exclusively reactions to art. — hypericin

Good point.

Heh, even though I put forward difference between the categorical/evaluative use of "work of art" I fall prey.

What's interesting in your point to me is that it could be a work of art, but since it's kind of already been done it's unlikely to be "baptized" into the artworld of museums.

***

Now, suppose someone were to hang the same within a local coffee shop that featured local artists. It couldn't be their first entry, but after some years of producing paintings and such the local shop for hanging local artwork decided to give it a go, with a pricetag of "$250" and everything.

There's where I'm slightly inclined to think it's not art, but a reproduction of a cliche in order to sell something that's easy to produce as a sign of sophistication -- when if we look at what they just bought we know that's stupid.

I'd consider the font art, yes.

I was thinking of someone printing out "Times New Roman" in Times New Roman on 8.5"x11" paper, putting it up in art museum and claiming "that's art!" EDIT: in our time, that is.

There's a certain limit, that I do not know how to navigate (and am excited that @J is along for the ride on this thought adventure for the reason that I do not know how to navigate) to the notion of an artworld that I can imagine, but it may just look as stupid as someone saying "Modern art is bad because it doesn't look like anything, and my 3 year old could draw it"

Sound similar to Logan's Run. Mostly cuz of the 30-year-old cutoff for their society, and that it's also a bad and wonderful scifi flick. (1976)

I have no training in art. I think there are three key elements when it comes to artwork, namely, idea, form, and media. The idea is the mental focus of the artist, which is expressed in the artwork. Form is the configuration of media that plays a role in conveying the idea between the artist and the audience. Media is material used for the artwork. — MoK

So, given this tripartite distinction, what makes a painting a painting?

It's a good set of distinctions, IMO -- but I want to see them in operation.

Yes, I agree.

This goes to something @unenlightened said some years ago, and it stuck with me (though of course, being philosophicalish, I resist it): Philosophy is parasitic.

Or, perhaps, symbiotic, to put it more kindly.

Not always, of course, but I agree that philosophy of art and history of art require and feed on one another in a good way. Same with science, for that matter.

I'm a huge Hopper fan. — Hanover

Same

I've had the privilege of seeing his paintings in MOMA and the Chicago Art Institute.

Derrida is an interesting philosopher to bring into the mix.

One part I'd caution here though is that Derrida is not an aesthetic philosopher. There's the system of signs, yes, and art can be seen as a system of signs that define one another -- as has been present in this conversation.

Also his notion of "absence" fits very easily into discussions on art -- it's not what was said as much as what was not said, at times. The unspoken, the not-present, is meaningful.

But I do think he's focusing in on the problems of knowledge and inference given these particular thoughts on language rather than explicitly addressing aesthetic questions.

His would be a philosophy that I think I could argue as interesting if I could come up with an aesthetics of philosophy. ("interesting" in the manner that others who like philosophy ought to take him seriously)

But for now I'm trying to develop the ideas of aesthetic thinking, with respect to philosophy at least, at all.

I do.

I might put doubt on a printed paper using Times New Roman saying "This is Art", but painting letters is part of art at this point.

Your reflection is wonderful, as always. No further comments.

Art is the persistence of memory -- Salvador Dalí.

The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order.

Isn't painting the way we express our dreams and hallucinations, while drawing is a simple technique? — javi2541997

So this gets into something that I'm thinking about -- the semantic layer of art.

If the soft watches are a symbol, then there's something to interpret beyond "soft watches on canvas by painter dali": a deeper meaning to the art-object.

I'm interested. Can you say more?

Yes, because here we have a question about the actual composition of the object, which Danto showed was not the question concerning art tout court. I should have noted that in my post, thanks. — J

O no worries. I'm glad to have you thinking along given your familiarity with Danto and how it seems intuitive to me.

Doesn’t it matter why we are asking? What purpose will the answer serve? — Fire Ologist

Sure!

My purpose here is to introduce philosophical thinking about aesthetics, given the amount of push-back I got in suggesting that aesthetics and philosophy are related.

But the only way to do that is to turn towards the "pure" aesthetics -- so you can see there's more to my personal interest in the matter, but perhaps you'll see what I'm talking about. But that can't be done when matters of money and such are at stake -- like the paintings in a museum -- but rather when we don't have anything to lose by our expression.

How do we judge then?

It certainly matter why we're asking -- and perhaps aesthetic judgment can be differentiated from practical judgment on the basis that we're not asking for practical reasons of action, but only for reasons of admiration, attraction, beauty, interest, etc.

What are those stories? What are those circumstances? How do they vary from era to era, culture to culture? — J

I'd settle for question 1 and 2. Even within one culture (perhaps artworld?) it's hard to specify the stories and circumstances of art.

So have we moved from aesthetics to Art History?

And why is there not an expression for visual arts equivalent to "musicology"? — Banno

I'd like to think that we haven't moved from aesthetics to art history, tho art history provides good examples to think through.

I think I agree, though I'm inclined towards the idiom of formalism for judgment rather than looking at how we use language in those circumstances.

Not that that's an easy distinction to distinguish.

I think I lean towards 2, though accepting there's something to 1 in differentiating, say, between drawing and painting.

Not that referent, but this one!

Ya'know, since it's a pixelated image....

Eh. Even if anarchy is the goal -- learning political participation at the representative level can pave the way to being able to judge the difference between various political ideologies, but in practice.

It's not like we just get to avoid the state existing because we have ideals of something better. It's as necessary to deal with as farming methods and so forth.

A painting is a picture whose predominant medium is paint. A drawing is a picture whose predominant medium is pencil, charcoal, pastel, chalk etc.. There is no hard and fast distinction...it's basically a somewhat loose distinction between wet and dry mediums. — Janus

I think your notion of "picture" needs clarifying here -- you've stated that a picture need not be representational, and others have mostly taken you to task on "picture" because it seems to indicate a kind of representation? I think?

Either way if this is how you'll differentiate paintings from drawings -- dry and wet pictures -- it's fair to ask "So how do we identify a picture?"

Yeah, that's true. And even before that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Stieglitz is widely credited with demonstrating that photography is just as much an art as anything else rather than a perfect representation.

I'm really enjoying reading everyone's answers. I want to put forward one other possibility as I'm thinking it over because I haven't seen it said yet and I want to see what others think.

So this will be close to the idea that a painting is what we say it is, but with more details. I want to say that there are criteria of judgment which differentiate a painting from the wall it sits on, and that these criteria are something decided by our artworld. In some sense the expectation set by going into a museum that showcases great works defines what gets to be considered art and what does not get to be considered art.

But then that's not quite right, of course. It's just a familiar experience for anyone whose bothered to go to an art museum to draw from: there's a certain expectation of the pieces that is different from the temple it sits in. Usually the museum is considered a peice of architectural art, but how we judge a building and how we judge a painting are very different.

I'm inclined to follow along with -- "family resemblance" gets used a lot because it resolves a lot of the various counter-examples you'll inevitably capture with a strict set of criteria. I like the idea of there being a sort of paradigmatic set which we call "paintings", and from that set we can start to make some distinctions that will hold in a good enough way -- we can see why someone would say that -- while acknowledging there's likely a counter-example within the set to any proposed strict criteria.

Something like a formalism of judgment which acknowledges the difficulties in stating universal criteria for something that's probably better suited for a family resemblance.

The distinctions I'm thinking through and liking: everyone's theory on the difference between a drawing and a painting has been more illuminating that I suspected it would be: I thought the far comparisons would do better, but actually I'm enjoying these various distinctions between drawings, paintings, pictures, and art: wet/dry, High/low, warm-up/real-deal...

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/voting-age-by-country

https://www.boerneraadet.dk/english/

Also found out that there's a bi-annual "children's congress" for children with type 1 diabetes in the states. Something interesting to note there is that the children don't have a right to vote but they can still participate in the process if there's some sort of organization to facilitate lobbying.. Funnily enough that's probably more effective than granting the right to vote carte blanche to children.

Overall, though, I tend to think children have more to offer the world in terms of their own needs than given credit for. The best way to teach responsibility is to make someone responsible for something and follow through. If you forgo all "irresponsible" decisions until 25, like the United Arab Emirates according to the link above, then you'll have no practice in being an adult until 25. Then you'll be the equivalent of an 18 year old who has likewise not experienced adulthood yet.

Also I think adults make much ado about their own strengths. If a person is impulsive all the way into their middle age then something tells me that they're not going to "reform" into proper property-owning responsible citizens that can make clear decisions in national affairs. They're just as confused as the rest of the world.

But the real reason to give people the right to vote is because they have a right to voice their own interests as they see fit. It's about giving them power as a universal right, not ensuring that they are meritocratic enough to wield power.

How locally? Just for you, in your own head so to speak, or how wide can the local go, and why do you think that? — Fire Ologist

I'd say "just for us", rather than just for me. It's not like I invented logic, philosophy, language, etc. I'm connected to others and through that connection -- which included a great deal of care on the part of others before I was able to care in turn -- I am enabled to participate in the game of giving and taking reasons along with everyone else so enabled. Part of that game is in modifying the rules of giving and taking reasons -- a reason for a reason. I think that's the part where we can collectively build the rules of inference in a sort of sui generis manner for every endeavor.

Now, maybe the cosmic universe cares in some sense about that, but from my perspective it only matters locally. I don't even care if there is a universal perspective that says it all. My finitude ensures that I'll never attain that.

I don't see a strict incompatibility between Davidson's account of interpretation and Searle's account of the construction of social institutions. Paying that out would make an interesting thread. — Banno

I don't, either.

And it'd be interesting to try and combine the notions.

What is odd to me is not that you don’t agree with me, but that you see your own position as coherent.

You can’t say “better” in any meaningful way. I agree we could all agree something is better, but who really gives a shit what we think? Certainly nobody in 100 years.

I’m trying to say something, anything, one thing, that someone might give a shit about in 1,000 years, or if they were an alien race of persons 10,000 years advanced, or a god. — Fire Ologist

Why?

Personally I know that what I say is in the face of an absurd world -- so it will only matter locally.

However, that's what matters. Our responding to you demonstrates that "who gives a shit?" is us, here, talking.

I think they would all agree the LNC will always help clarify reasoning.

I am going for it, anyway, despite stepping out too far over the precipice.

And I see you doing the same but you won’t admit it.

You think that, but the only reason you think it is because you can't imagine things otherwise, yes? :

The LNC is an absolute. Maybe someday we’ll find we can use reason while contradicting reason, but probably not, so I see no need to say the LNC is merely stipulated and temporary and provisional awaiting its revision. It’s absolute - I can’t think otherwise and be thinking. — Fire Ologist

"I can't think otherwise" is usually a hint at a kind of transcendental argument going on, if it be articulated.

If it's absolute, then it's not absolutely absolute -- it's only absolute relative to your ability to imagine or think.

Aren't the bourgeoisie just the middle class today? — unimportant

No.

The bourgeoisie are the owners of the means of production -- the workplace.

The boss you deal with is "middle class" in the sense that they're in the middle and make enough money to not suffer and are mostly aligned with bourgeois interests due to that.

But the owners of the workplace are the bourgeoisie. Not the owners of a home who peddle its ideology in the workplace, but the bona-fide owners (and perhaps movers and shakers at a certain level) who make decisions about the economy and how workers will conduct their business because they have purchased their labor.

'Reference frame' is from relativity theory. It is true that relativity theory and quantum theory undermine the idea of absolute objectivity. That's one of the sources of the very anxiety that this thread is about. — Wayfarer

"Reference frame" came from math prior to Einstein. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation

Lorentz (1892–1904) and Larmor (1897–1900), who believed the luminiferous aether hypothesis, also looked for the transformation under which Maxwell's equations are invariant when transformed from the aether to a moving frame. They extended the FitzGerald–Lorentz contraction hypothesis and found out that the time coordinate has to be modified as well ("local time"). Henri Poincaré gave a physical interpretation to local time (to first order in v/c, the relative velocity of the two reference frames normalized to the speed of light) as the consequence of clock synchronization, under the assumption that the speed of light is constant in moving frames.[8] Larmor is credited to have been the first to understand the crucial time dilation property inherent in his equations.[9]

In 1905, Poincaré was the first to recognize that the transformation has the properties of a mathematical group, and he named it after Lorentz.[10] Later in the same year Albert Einstein published what is now called special relativity, by deriving the Lorentz transformation under the assumptions of the principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light in any inertial reference frame, and by abandoning the mechanistic aether as unnecessary.[11]

I can see the link between the two. But I don't see how that fits with what Banno says. — Ludwig V

On the left hand side I have three examples of representing belief, and on the right hand side I have each corresponding constituting actions of belief. At least, that's what I was thinking in offering the examples: Also to get a better idea of this wider sense than the bet, to see what other species of representing/constituting belief there may be.

Hrm.

So we are not all really bad people deep down?

Interesting perspective but I dont think making a thread on this thought makes a person good. maybe it makes the person "Self Aware bad person" — QuirkyZen

By the argument that I provided that that person is self aware as being a bad person means they're not bad deep down -- they may never become good, but that recognition is enough.

And if even that knave with a heart of gold isn't bad deep down, then surely there's more than the knave?

I'm wondering -- were I to have the ring of gyges I very much doubt I'd post on a philosophy website about that possibility, unless we aren't all really bad people deep down.

So, if you make a thread on the thought then you are not a really bad person deep down.

If at least one person is not a really bad person deep down then not all people are all really bad people deep down.

QED.