What's the relationship between beauty and art?

Can a beautiful person be considered good art?

In the following scenario, a human has the best eyes; this human generates a lot of interest. Does good art mean more interest?

@Bartricks There is nothing wrong with your test.

In any society it is theKing who decides what is art. We get a bit off topic if we define who the king currently is.

If we had a definition of art, it would be the @definition that decided what art is.

If we can agree on a definition of art in this thread then we take the power of what is art away from the king and give it to the definition. All it requires is wide consensus.

No, I don't think that makes it circular. It's not like saying a dog is a dog. I've added the stipulation that it has to be intended. — Artemis

Intentions have content - so an intention to do what? If it is 'to make a work of art' then it is circular in the same way as 'a dog is something that thinks like a dog' would be.

If we remove the word 'art' from the content of the intention, then I'll wager we'll find counterexamples.

No it doesn't. Just needs to use shape and color in a manner to communicate some thought or feeling. Again, you can get more strict about good vs bad art. — Artemis

So now you're abandoning the 'suitably technically demanding' as a necessary condition, for some work is not technically demanding yet seems nevertheless to be art. Why not just let 'seems to be art' be the evidence, rather than 'satisfying this definition'?

I guess there would be an assumption that it must be manifest in the world somehow at some point, no matter how briefly. — Artemis

But now you're revising or refining the condition in light of a counterexample. So we already have the concept of art - or have an awareness of it via our reason - otherwise how do we even begin to give a definition? And how do we test proposed definition, apart from by seeing whether things that appear clearly to those possessed of reason to be art, qualify according to the definition?

If that's correct, then we do not need a definition and can appeal directly to rational appearances instead.

In any society it is theKing who decides what is art. We get a bit off topic if we define who the king currently is. — Pop

But you don't seem to appreciate that overcoming the prejudices of the age is 'precisely' what my test is designed to do.

You also don't seem to understand that the concept of art transcends our definitions.

You don't need a definition to know what is or is not a work of art. Our attempts to define art are attempts to describe the contours of a concept that we already have. So, we don't actually need the definition.

I know a work of art when I see one, as do most people. Yet I have no definition of art.

Our understanding does not come from definitions, and a successful definition achieves nothing more than to give you back an understanding that you already had.

What my archaeologist example is designed to do is access a pure form of that understanding.

jgill You are an artist. I bet by varying the formula you could learn to control the patterns / colours produced. — Pop

Thanks for replying, but by gaining control I would inevitably reduce the complexity of the imagery; I've tried, but with poor results. The subconscious has more latitude.

The discussion seems to have steamed up about hypotheticals.

Come on Bartricks and Artemis, take a look. It goes to whether art must be intentional. A real, concrete example!

You are thinking, it seems to me, that the options are either that there is some definition of art, or art is whatever the king says is art, or what a majority say is art.

We only have one way of recognising what is real and what is not: our reason. Our reason is our guide to reality. And it is via our reason that we recognise that some acts are right and others wrong; that some things are good and others bad; and that some things are art and others not.

It is 'definitions' that are human inventions, but it does not follow from this that 'that which we are seeking to define' is a human invention. We have not invented the concept of art, rather we are seeking to understand it. And we have to use our reason to achieve that understanding, for it is from our reason that we are aware of art in the first place.

The problem is that our reason is a faculty and as such it can - and often is - corrupted by the age in which we live (for to date no age has 'the truth' as its overriding goal, and thus any age will to some extent seek to corrupt the reason of its denizens so that their reason delivers verdicts conducive to achieving that age's goals).

How do we overcome such corrupting forces, given that they have operated on the very instrument we use to investigate reality?

Well, in the case of art we overcome it by burying putative works of art in fields and asking archeologists to dig up the field and then we see how they classify it, that's how!

I do not follow your meaning. I think we do indeed know art when we see it. Or rather, we know it when archaeologists see it.

So, some seem to think you only know something when you can define it, as if somehow reality were made of definitions.

I think we already have - via our reason - the understanding that the definitions are seeking to capture.

Intentions have content - so an intention to do what? If it is 'to make a work of art' then it is circular in the same way as 'a dog is something that thinks like a dog' would be. — Bartricks

Intention to create something that is aesthetically engaging in some way.

suitably technically demanding' as a necessary condition, for some work is not technically demanding yet seems nevertheless to be art. — Bartricks

I have not abandoned it. I'm pointing out that suitably technically demanding doesn't mean the same as highly technically skilled. It must meet some basic minimum of technicality, but for something to simply count as art, it need not be more than the skillset of a preschooler.

If that's correct, then we do not need a definition and can appeal directly to rational appearances instead — Bartricks

What is the content of the rational appearances to which we are appealing? That's what a definition tries to capture. You're right that we often intuit the definition, but that doesn't negate the existence of a definition.

↪jgill
I do not follow your meaning. I think we do indeed know art when we see it. Or rather, we know it when archaeologists see it.

So, some seem to think you only know something when you can define it, as if somehow reality were made of definitions.

I think we already have - via our reason - the understanding that the definitions are seeking to capture — Bartricks

What meaning? I agree with the , "know art when . . . " statement. Maybe that tells us art is only "definable" by one's subconscious? I'm not sure about your "reason" comment. Does reason lead to understanding in this context? I would guess not.

Intention to create something that is aesthetically engaging in some way. — Artemis

What if my intention is purely to make money - I couldn't care less if the work is aesthetically engaging, I just know that people like my drawings and are willing to pay me large sums of money for them?

Take Gainsborough. That was the case with him. He hated painting portraits - he didn't like them and wanted to paint landscapes - but he knew others really liked his portraits and that he could bang them out quite easily, so that's why he did them. But a Gainsborough portrait is clearly a work of art, despite him having no intention to aesthetically engage anyone by painting them.

What if Rembrandt just imagines a work of art, but doesn't paint it on anything? Is the imaginary painting a work of art? Surely not. — Bartricks

Another thought here: the idea of a publicly accessible medium implies that people other than the artist must at some point have had at least the possibility of accessing the art (though it may or may not have been accessed), which entails some sort of manifestation in the world outside of Rembrandt's imagination.

What if my intention is purely to make money - I couldn't care less if the work is aesthetically engaging, I just know that people like my drawings and are willing to pay me large sums of money for them?

Take Gainsborough. That was the case with him. He hated painting portraits - he didn't like them and wanted to paint landscapes - but he knew others really liked his portraits and that he could bang them out quite easily, so that's why he did them. But a Gainsborough portrait is clearly a work of art. — Bartricks

He whether he liked his own art or not, he understood that they aesthetically engage others.

Intention to create something that is aesthetically engaging in some way. — Artemis

Is intention necessary? What of my images? Have you looked? You seem well versed in art matters. Please comment.

But he did not intend to engage them aesthetically (anticipating that they may be engaged aesthetically not being the same as intending that it happen). Plus why are you so sure about that? What if he gave no thought at all to why people were willing to pay him large sums of money for them, he just wanted the cash? That could easily have been the case - probably was the case, given the contempt he had for most of his clients - yet Gainsborough portraits are still works of art and it is fanciful to think that whether they retain that status depends crucially on what we discover about Gainsborough's intentions when he created them.

[/You also don't seem to understand that the concept of art transcends our definitions.quote]@Bartricks

The way to prove your assumption is to find fault with the following definition:

'Art is an expression of human consciousness. An art work is information about an artists consciousness and subconsciousness'

Show me a work of art that dose not fit the description..

I do not know what

Art is an expression of human consciousness

means.

An art work is information about an artists consciousness and subconsciousness'

That's not necessarily true - take my Gainsborough example. He didn't like painting portraits, and so there's a decent chance that most Gainsborough portraits were painted by a grump who resented every brushstroke. But you can't tell that from the portraits plus it is grossly implausible to think that whether or not they qualify as art turns on whether we can reliably infer anything about his mental states from them.

I drew this.



It's art.

I'm tenative to move away from the definition, it's an expression of 'human consciousness', and am sticking with the Oxford definition (dare I say, not only human?).

If I wanted to express my consciousness, I'd do a black fill with small pink and white dots.

How much do you want for it?

But he did not intend to engage them aesthetically. Plus why are you so sure about that? — Bartricks

Well, unless he was obtuse somehow, it seems to me that he understood why his making paintings was making himself money, and so it seems to me he must've understood he was engaging others aesthetically.

If he was not intending any aesthetics, then it's not art and the aesthetic engagement the viewer has with his work is just that. It differs not at all from the aesthetic engagement a viewer has of a real sunset then in that regard.

But again, it's doubtful to me that he was that obtuse...

This one's on the house.

Too cheap to be art then. Art is expensive.

Your words aren't cheap my friend.

I have not looked yet, but from your description of it being a computer program with the unintended byproduct being aesthetically pleasing, I would say it was originally not art, just aesthetically pleasing math, but that anything you create now with the program with the intent that it should be aesthetically pleasing would qualify as art.

[/quotThat's not necessarily true - take my Gainsborough example. He didn't like painting portraits, and so there's a decent chance that most Gainsborough portraits were painted by a grump who resented every brushstroke. But you can't tell that from the portraits plus it is grossly implausible to think that whether or not they qualify as art turns on whether we can reliably infer anything about his mental states from them.e]@Bartricks

You are describing Gainsborough's consciousness.

Sorry I should post my understanding of consciousness .
It will take a while I type with two fingers.

Yes, I am describing his likely conscious states at the time he created his portraits. But his portraits themselves do not express those conscious states, and nor does it seem plausible that their status as 'art' should depend on us being able to infer something about his conscious states from them.
So, the idea that it is essential to something qualifying as art that it report something about its creator's conscious states seems false. Some art may qualify in that way, but it doesn't seem to be either a necessary or sufficient condition.

Google isn't being helpful: can you give me a link or reference to how we know Gainsborough disliked his own art?

So, the idea that it is essential to something qualifying as art that it report something about its creator's conscious states seems false. Some art may qualify in that way, but it doesn't seem to be either a necessary or sufficient condition. — Bartricks

How else to differentiate between art and a sunflower or bird's nest?

I'm afraid I am unsure how I know that about Gainsborough - I think I must have read it in a book somewhere or heard it in a documentary or something. But I am sure Wikipedia - which I refuse to use - will probably confirm it.

But anyway, the fact is whether I am right or wrong about Gainsborough himself, it is implausible to think that whether we classify his portraits as art or not should depend on it.

How else to differentiate between art and a sunflower? — Artemis

We differentiate first, then we search for the basis upon which we differentiated. And so we know what is art prior to having a definition. Thus thinking that the business of understanding is the business of formulating and then living by definitions is a profound mistake.

The following is my understanding of consciousness.It draws largely on the work of Jean Piaget:


Consciousness

We all have an understanding of ourselves and the world that we live in.
This understanding is consciousness.

Consciousness is a logical construct, influenced by psychopathology, and biology. It develops out of intelligence. Intelligence is a tool to solve problems. As we live life we need to constantly solve problems, eventually we develop an encyclopedic array of solutions to problems, and constructs of how things are and how they will be. This forms our understanding of ourselves and the world that we live in. This is consciousness. Consciousness allows us to venture forward to live life confident that what we expect to happen will happen. Without consciousness we would go forward completely in the dark, if at all.

Our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in underpins our personality. Psychopathology and biology influence our personality, but do not dominate it. We can not experience the world through psychopathology, or biology. We experience the world through our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in - our consciousness . Personality is consciousness in action.

Consciousness effectively is the world, as the world is not directly experienced but construed, so the world and experience always remain a construct in our head. We make constructs in our consciousness as a result of sense stimuli. We filter and construct the world in our consciousness. Our understanding of self and the world we live in is our entire world - our consciousness is our world. Nothing exists outside of it.

Of course much must exist in the world that we are not conscious of. This information is blank to us until it enters our consciousness.

Because we all must construct our consciousness out of solutions to problems personally experienced, and our experience is always unique, even identical twins develop a slightly different consciousness. Siblings brought up in the same environment can develop remarkably different consciousness. We all posses an imperfect, psychologically, and biologically skewed consciousness. Communication is necessary to orient ourselves in each others consciousness. When there is agreement, we call this reality.

Our consciousness is the only world we have. And we all have a slightly different consciousness, hence we live in slightly different worlds.



The most beautiful thing in the world is the knowledge that we can expand our consciousness by increasing our understanding of ourselves and the world that we live in, and thereby expand our world.