I’m not trying to distinguish art from non-art; that appears to be your aim, not mine. I’m trying to distinguish between aesthetics and your claim that art should be about beauty. — Possibility
Well, for me, the essence of art is creativity, the experience of art is the possibility of understanding what we see, and the beauty of art is a judgement of success in that endeavour. Aesthetics, however, refers to the relational structure that enables all of this to occur, and is inclusive of both unmanifested creativity and any failure to understand what we see. Aesthetic value is a judgement of beauty with claims to universality, but an aesthetic experience can be so much more than that. — Possibility
I do admit that creativity is involved in art for it's necessary for beautification - how might I take something and give it, in your words, "...aesthetic value..." However, creativity per se isn't art. For instance it took a whole lot of creativity to invent the automobile but the earliest automobiles, if you look at old pictures, lacked the "...aesthetic value..." modern automobiles possess. — TheMadFool
I’m not say that creativity per se is art, but that it is a property without which art would not be what it is - ergo, its essence — Possibility
There are many skills that are considered an ‘art’ in the hands of some, due to their creative approaches to problem-solving that incrementally challenge what can be achieved, but such endeavours are considered ‘beautiful’ only so long as they don’t overstretch our capacity to integrate the new information with how we predict it would (or believe it should) look or move. — Possibility
The ‘aesthetic value’ of early automobiles is lost on many of us, but at the time they would have been looked upon by engineers (at least) as a masterpiece, a thing of beauty - in looking at this contraption they understood what could be achieved. If you understand the history of the craft, you would appreciate their aesthetic value even now, just as we do with paintings and sculpture. — Possibility
So, do some art "...overstretch our capacity to integrate the new information with how we predict it would (or believe it should) look or move"? After all, if beauty is not all that central to art, some art shouldn't be beautiful. Can you give me some examples of art that have nothing to do with beauty? — TheMadFool
Some art isn’t beautiful, or at least elements of it are disturbing or difficult to face, watch or acknowledge, let alone judge as ‘beautiful’. These pieces are often described as ‘important’. The earlier example I referred to was of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, first exhibited (after initial rejection) in 1917. The 1994 New Zealand film Once Were Warriors is etched in my memory as a disturbingly powerful piece of cinema that I cannot bring myself to watch again, and yet would not hesitate to recommend. Likewise for Khaled Hosseini’s novels.
And Monet’s Impression: Sunrise was among many works rejected by the Salon des Beaux Arts in Paris for years prior to the 1874 Impressionist Exhibition, because they over-stretched critics’ capacity to integrate certain techniques and subject matter with how they believed paintings should look. These artworks were not ‘beautiful’, and did not aim to be: they intended to portray the aesthetic qualities experienced in the fleeting nature of light and the ordinariness of life. That critics couldn’t recognise this aesthetic quality, let alone judge it to be ‘beautiful’, did not mean it wasn’t art, even then. — Possibility
Aesthetics, or esthetics (/ɛsˈθɛtɪks, iːs-, æs-/), is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). — Wikipedia
I can tell you this, your views depart from the mainstream understanding of art is. — TheMadFool
Marcel Duchamp was simply having some fun and unfortunately it was at the expense of those who know that art must be about beauty. I'm sure his reputation from his previous works which were, I suppose, beautiful, helped him slip this monstrosity past the art checkpost. It happens. I remember a long time ago knowing a person who was known for his honesty. At one point he did lie but everyone believed it because of his reputation as an upstanding bloke. — TheMadFool
I’m okay with that - I’m not after the popular vote. — Possibility
already earned a reputation for adding aesthetic qualities to his work — Possibility
was originally rejected as ‘not art’ — Possibility
What is new to some may be old to others. — Jack Cummins
The reason why Duchamp was recognized as an artist was because some of his works were beautiful. OK. — TheMadFool
Julian Street, an art critic for The New York Times wrote that the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory," and cartoonists satirized the piece. It spawned dozens of parodies in the years that followed. A work entitled Food Descending a Staircase was exhibited at a show parodying the most outrageous works at the Armory, running concurrently with the show at The Lighthouse School for the Blind. In American Art News, there were prizes offered to anyone who could find the nude.
After attending the Armory Show and seeing Marcel Duchamp's nude, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote: "Take the picture which for some reason is called 'A Naked Man Going Down Stairs'. There is in my bathroom a really good Navajo rug which, on any proper interpretation of the Cubist theory, is a far more satisfactory and decorative picture. Now, if, for some inscrutable reason, it suited somebody to call this rug a picture of, say, 'A Well-Dressed Man Going Up a Ladder', the name would fit the facts just about as well as in the case of the Cubist picture of the 'Naked Man Going Down Stairs'. From the standpoint of terminology each name would have whatever merit inheres in a rather cheap straining after effect; and from the standpoint of decorative value, of sincerity, and of artistic merit, the Navajo rug is infinitely ahead of the picture." — From Wikipedia
In other words, to many, those who share my sentiment that art has to be aesthetically pleasing I presume, Duchamp's work wasn't art.
As far as I can tell, if Duchamp was a pioneer of the point of view on art that you're espousing, then kudos to him. I don't know what kind of artistic environment his take on art take shape in but it must've been marked with deep frustration at the status quo whatever it was. To present a toilet as art comes off as a desperate measure...perhaps because of...desperate times. — TheMadFool
Not the same thing - and I’m getting a little tired of you clipping my statements to suit your own argument. Aesthetic qualities does NOT equal beautiful - you’re equivocating aesthetic qualities with positive aesthetic VALUE. His Nude Descending a Staircase No.2 horrified art critics and patrons alike in the US in 1913 — Possibility
they were conveying a new understanding of how to see the world - one that wasn’t yet understood in art. — Possibility
I think that you make an important point about the need for 'a new understanding of the world.' Of course, this is not unique to art, and definitely applies to philosophy. But I do believe that art and the arts are one place where this can take place. You speak of the 'need to focus on the essence of what it means to be human' and I completely agree.
I do not see the question of art and influence as being entirely separate from the one in the thread of where are we going? Remember, I am not talking about visual art alone but about all the arts. I would also see philosophy as an art in its own right. I believe that we need to find new ways of seeing. — Jack Cummins
But the aesthetic VALUE is completely determined by beauty, the aesthetic quality. To speak of one is to speak of the other. You wrote "...aesthetic qualities..." Pray tell what other qualities other than beauty are there in aesthetics?
Not that I want to get into an argument with you but I quoted YOU so if you're not happy, you have yourself to blame for it. — TheMadFool
I understand that Duchamp's works, some of them I presume, elicited a response that was negative in every sense of that word from the art critics. For my money, the reason why critics were, in your words, "...horrified..." was because the work was absent beauty in the form that the world and the critics were familiar with up until that point. For Duchamp to be considered a legit painter, an artist in his own right, we must come to the conclusion that he was offering a different perspective, on, revealing another side to, beauty and not outright rejecting the role and importance of beauty in art. That;s as far as I'm willing to go with what you said. — TheMadFool
A "...new understanding of how to see the world..." as I've been explaining ad nauseum isn't unique to art. The same can be said of philosophical positions, scientific theories, and whathaveyou and that being so, art can't be defined by in those terms. To illustrate analogically, we can't use eyes to define human beings because other animals also have eyes; to define human beings, we need to focus on the essence of what it is to be human. Similarly, to define art, we can't rely on features that are present in other non-art disciplines; what we need is something unique to art and that, for me, is beauty. — TheMadFool
I realise that you believe that art is about beauty. However, your discussion of this in relation to the this seems to be mainly abstract. So, I am just wondering which artists or works of art can be seen as measuring up to this quality? — Jack Cummins
Aesthetic qualities are the way in which art elements and principles, materials and techniques work together to influence the mood, feeling or meaning of an artwork. They can be gentle, angry, happy, sad, sharp, bright, harsh, languid, etc.
Aesthetic value is the value that an artwork possesses in virtue of its capacity to elicit pleasure (positive value) or displeasure (negative value) when appreciated or experienced aesthetically. — Possibility
Duchamp was offering a broader perspective of art - he was disputing the rejection of negative value in a created aesthetic experience. — Possibility
But beauty is not unique to art at all - it is ubiquitous in nature. So, by the same token, art can’t be defined in terms of beauty, anymore than new understanding. In my view, what is unique to art is the self-conscious creation of an aesthetic experience. And no, it doesn’t have to be new in order to be art, but it doesn’t have to be beautiful, either. This is what art ultimately strives for: new and unexpected information, rendered with satisfying aesthetic clarity. It’s more a work-in-process than a product in this respect. — Possibility
I'm somewhat confident that if we make a list of artworks that have been bought/sold for huge sums of money, money here the surrogate marker for real art, you'll [probably] discover that art lovers all over the world choose beauty over anything else that art deals with. — TheMadFool
Odd that nowhere in your colorful description is beauty even mentioned in passing. — TheMadFool
I too feel that artists should broaden their horizons and expand their interests to be as inclusive of the multi-faceted world that we inhabit. However, they mustn't do this in a way that undermines art itself and they're guilty of doing precisely that when they ignore beauty and get carried away by the novelty of their ideas. For example, Duchamp seems to have been so bowled over by the freshness and originality of his ideas that he completely forgot about beauty. — TheMadFool
What's unique about beauty in art is that the latter makes the former a value in its own right. — TheMadFool
I would confidently dispute that. If you took a look at the twenty most expensive paintings sold, roughly half of them would not be considered ‘beautiful’ by the general public let alone art lovers, and were certainly not purchased at that price for their beauty. These include de Kooning, Munch, Pollock, Rothko, Lichtenstein and Basquiat - all over $100 million apiece. Many of them, however, are recognised as ‘important’ works in our overall progress of aesthetic awareness. Modigliani, in particular, is indicative of a more ‘respectful’ and ‘sensitive’ treatment of female nudes - although they were considered ‘ugly’ during his lifetime (for showing pubic hair). These artists challenge us to see the world for what it IS, not just for what we’d prefer it to be. Their aesthetic value is realised in the knowledge we gain - not just the pleasure - from thinking about how we feel when we look at it — Possibility
If you can’t see beauty in those definitions, then I doubt you understand aesthetics at all. It’s only after Kant that the term ‘aesthetics’ was commonly reduced to the nature and appreciation of beauty. It’s such a narrow perspective - Kant uses the example of beauty in aesthetic experience to demonstrate rational structure in our capacity for judgement, not to define aesthetics. The sublime is no less important to an overall understanding of aesthetics — Possibility
I understand where you're coming from but to "...challenge us to see the world for what it IS, not just for what we'd prefer it to be" is, to be brutally frank, not an artist's job or if you that doesn't go down well with you, it definitely isn't something unique to art i.e. it fails to define art; plus it amounts trespassing onto territories that rightfully belong to other disciplines/fields. — TheMadFool
That said, I did admit that artists should be given the freedom to pick and choose any topic under the sun as subjects of their artistic urges BUT, and this can't be emphasized enough, they should make it a point to leave a clearly visible sign that the topic/subject, whatever it is, has passed through the mind of an artist. — TheMadFool
This standpoint is in keeping with how we approach other issues: I remember, quite some time ago, reading a book on critical thinking and there's as discussion in it about how we must get all sides to a story and that, as per the author, involves getting a teacher's perspective, a student's perspective, a parent's perspective, a politician's perspective, so and so forth. The reason why this is done is because each such perspective brings to the table a different take on the issue at hand and, most importantly, each perspective is unique and vital to our understanding. — TheMadFool
Likewise, an artist's perspective must be unique for it to be worthy of our attention and admiration and it, for certain, isn't if the artist's intention is solely to "...challenge us to see the world for what it IS, not just what we'd prefer it to be". Philosopher's do the same thing with words. Comedians do it with jokes. Thus my insistence that beauty be recognized as an essential attribute of art for it's the only quality that art can claim as its very own and thus the only quality that can make the artist's perspective stand out as a one of a kind among the myriad points of view that are available to us. — TheMadFool
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