The way it seems to me is philosophy of art is in the business of, ultimately, constraining art by defining it; a definition although good to have - we can know with 100% certainty what is and is not art, paving the way for deeper philosophical study of the subject - is, if one gives it some thought, a straitjacket - restricts/constrains/limits/ the artist by having to conform to the definition whatever that is. — TheMadFool

This definition doesn't restrict the artist in any way, other than in the understanding that art is not simply art about art - that it is always inherently meaningful. This has always been the case.

Without a definition anybody can just BS about art as they please. With a definition like this one, art becomes something substantial again.

Without a definition anybody can just BS about art as they please. — Pop

One man's poison is another man's food.

This definition doesn't restrict the artist in any way, other than in the understanding that art is not simply art about art — Pop

I haven't paid this thread much attention, because definitions are not all that helpful, but further, any definition of art will immediately encourage any sensible artist to produce something that does not meet that definition.

Ceci n'est pas un poste.

I haven't paid this thread much attention, because definitions are not all that helpful, but further, any definition of art will immediately encourage any sensible artist to produce something that does not meet that definition. — Banno

:up: Yes they would if they could!!

This definition is itself an artwork - in the form of a scientific, irreducible, and falsifiable definition of art. :smile:

:up: Yes they would if they could!! — Pop

Hence the image above. They apparently did.

Art about art.

The nemesis of your definition?

Ceci n'est pas un poste.

Hence the image above. They apparently did.

Art about art.

The nemesis of your definition? — Banno

Nah, that is totally captured. It is not possible to make art without expressing your consciousness.
Something I keep repeating every few posts, but not many seem to get it. :sad:

So everything is art. Your definition is too surely too broad?

Ce n'est pas de l'art

So everything is art. — Banno

This has been the understanding in art circles for the past 100 years or so, since Duchamp's urinal.

Ce n'est pas de l'ar — Banno

This is not art?

This has been the understanding in art circles for the past 100 years or so, since Duchamp's urinal. — Pop

What has?


Ce n'est pas une question.

What has? — Banno

That anything deemed to be art, is art.

Without a definition anybody can just BS about art as they please. — Pop

This is exactly the attitude your definition attempts to address.

Then the definition in your OP is wrong?

Ce n'est pas une définition?

This is exactly the attitude your definition attempts to address. — TheMadFool

Yes by pointing out that even BS about art is an expression of consciousness.

Then the definition in your OP is wrong? — Banno

:roll: Ok, lets have it. What is your argument?

Yes by pointing out that even BS about art is an expression of consciousness. — Pop

There you go. Are you now going to desist from trying to define art?

There you go. Are you now going to desist from trying to define art? — TheMadFool

Why would I do that?

What is your argument? — Pop

In so far as I have one, that there's no point in attempting such a definition.

Ceci n'est pas une conclusion

Why would I do that? — Pop

Why restrict the artist or, more accurately, why would the artist give a damn about your definition?

Why restrict the artist or, more accurately, why would the artist give a damn about your definition? — TheMadFool

It does not restrict anybody. There are no artist's lining up outside my door in order to give a damn about the definition. :lol: However, the definition IS scientific, irreducible, and falsifiable.

It does not restrict anybody. There are no artist's lining up outside my door in order to give a damn about the definition. :lol: However, the definition IS scientific, irreducible, and falsifiable. — Pop

My point is simple: Your definition is, all things considered, broad, very broad, an indication that art has a rich diversity, there's a lot to include in the definition; another way of saying that is there's no such thing as BS art and that, if you really think about it, means art can't be, and in my humble opinion shouldn't be, defined.

I quite like the Oxford definition of art.

The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

The "application of human creative skill and imagination" here is key imo. I understand it not just as the process of creating art but also as the process of perceiving art. Anything that creates a sensory stimulation could be deemed art but in order for it to be art, someone has to consider it as art.

Consciousness requires the story arc which inevitably contains grief, rage, disappointment, etc. If the production and consumption of art is about experience, then it necessarily centers around evil.

Nietzsche didn't think we could overcome this. He thought we need to learn to embrace it, I think. — frank

Embrace it, or sublimate it, make it yield to our needs. I never found Nietzsche interesting enough to study. He is the post modern hero because he denies the primacy of "truth" and embraces the irrational features of our existence. His claim that human existence is a constructed enterprise is an existential defining notion (essence precedes existence, e.g.) but I find Kierkegaard more challenging. Hegel is much more interesting these days to me, since I realized Kierkegaard lifted his dialectics from him. Hegel is Derrida's key inspiration/progenitor.
Of course, there is in this religious metaphysics pounding away, but it's not stupid metaphysics. Just unfamiliar. There is such a thing as authentic metaphysics.
As to grief, rage, etc, there is something of this in Dewey given that a life empty of trouble never develops, and meaning never is produced, since meaning emerges out of problem solving and no trouble, no problems, then no meaning and no aesthetics.
But then, this takes a philosophical turn: Let's say you're right about evil narratives at the center of consciousness. I would prefer, simply, trouble, for "evil" is connotatively thick and I don't want to make matters unduly weird. At the most basic level, the trouble an inquiring mind faces is religio-philosophical. The final trouble, problem to solve. It needs to be looked at as a problem to solve, not as empty metaphysics.

Embrace it, or sublimate it, make it yield to our needs. I never found Nietzsche interesting enough to study. He is the post modern hero because he denies the primacy of "truth" and embraces the irrational features of our existence. His claim that human existence is a constructed enterprise is an existential defining notion (essence precedes existence, e.g.) but I find Kierkegaard more challenging — Constance

I think Nietzsche is like several truckloads of feces into which a few diamonds and sapphires have been scattered. My connection to Nietzsche deep, like in the direction of dreams. But weren't Nietzsche and K saying something similar? regarding accepting evil?

There is such a thing as authentic metaphysics. — Constance

Could you say more about that?

would prefer, simply, trouble, for "evil" is connotatively thick and I don't want to make matters unduly weird. — Constance

I get that. The evil here includes hunger, coldness, the struggle to put the idea in words. I just like the word evil. :nerd:

At the most basic level, the trouble an inquiring mind faces is religio-philosophical. The final trouble, problem to solve. It needs to be looked at as a problem to solve, not as empty metaphysics. — Constance

What's the final trouble?

Without a definition anybody can just BS about art as they please. — Pop

You may have noticed that people can and often do BS as they please about all sorts of things, well defined or not. Art should probably be the least of our concerns when it comes to bullshitting. The only objective value in art is the skill in which it is executed, if the concern is with value. No one is fooled by an untrained violinist pretending to be a master, for instance.

Art is an expression of consciousness. At it's simplest, consciousness is mind activity. Although art is not exclusively an expression of mind activity, this is the singular thing we find in works of art - always. Every work of art ever made has to be an expression of mind activity, agreed? — Pop

Okay.

Mind activity is experiential. Phenomenology elucidates mind activity very well. It elucidates how human consciousness self organizes. How cognition is a disturbance in a state, how an emotion is felt due to the implications of the disturbance, and how the state reintegrates. it outlines how a self realigns itself due to this process, and so is a product of this process, agreed? — Pop

AS stated, phenomenology can be consistent with this as long as you don't bring empirical sciences and their categories into it. These are to be suspended, and, by some post, post moderns like Michel Henry's thinking, this suspension can go all the way down to presence as such.

So, art is an expression of mind activity, and mind activity is experiential, agreed? — Pop

Okay.

The experiential mind activity that creates consciousness is endlessly variable and open ended - we can see this in the art it creates - how it is always evolving- with no end in sight. Agreed? So it is not possible to define anything in terms of this, as it is endlessly variable, and open ended! And will continue to evolve into things we cannot possibly imagine. — Pop

If you follow the arguments laid out by Hegel and later, art has a place, a limit, and art's true p0urpose is to represent/reflect spirit and profound metaphysical intimations. Art became secular and lost its course because it became, as you say, open ended. Medieval art art was deeply religious and authentic. Renaissance art turned toward culture and human affairs because art cannot pass beyond the symbolic limitations of representation. NOW it is free and open and looking for its own consummation, never to be found in culture.
I think this an interesting idea, really.
AS to evolving into things unimaginable, perhaps; I mean, art, as with all things, is driven by existing paradigms. Kuhn's Structures does not apply only to science. All things progress like this. Not sure what there is in art to evolve into, but likely it will be just an extension of what is known and worked out. High tech versions of what we already know, as with music: did Schoenberg and others REALLY change the face of music? No. We are rather stuck with the basics and their intuitive possibilities.

So we are left with only mind activity to define art with. Agreed? — Pop

With the one caveat that a term like "mind" we have in itself an open question. Heidegger used dasein, then there is the transcendental ego of Husserl, the generative source of the grounding of all things of Eugene Fink, the Citta of the Pali canon, and so on. It could be that the real unlimitedness is as Hegel said, without the rationalism: beyond art into foundation of experience itself. A move away from art. Art has the same destiny as all things: annihilation in the move toward finality and consummation in Being (aka, God).

Hence art work is information about the artist's consciousness - This is all we can say that is. This information is present in every work of art. We cannot reduce this any further, and we can not add to it. Anything we add to this expression is not a constant of art. Only this expression is constant in art. So it is the only way to define art. Art can be defined to this extent and no further,. — Pop

You mean, the artwork being external to the events within the artist or art observer, it can only indicate, be a signifier, for what is REAL, which can only be the experience itself. One should look at the artwork as the outward manifestation of an actual consciousness, and its value reducible to palpable consciousness.

SO. look at the Munch's Scream or listen to Ravel's Bolero, the actual painting or musical sounds/auditory vibrations, are NOT the actuality, just information about the reality, which is consciousness. And the aesthetic is just one feature of what art information can be about. The Scream's look of horror, the frustrated relationship of Bret and Jake in the Sun Also Rises and all the rest: these are information ABOUT internal affairs?

Is this what you are saying? If so, how do you separate the artwork (information) from consciousness? It would be like separating language from consciousness" Consciousness in the world (putting metaphysics aside) IS language, and language is not information about consciousness. Thus, The Scream certainly is an expression of mood, affect, but the painting is not reducible to this, for the painting is itself incorporated into the structure of consciousness.
If you are going to call something information, then it has to information ABOUT something. What is that? If it is consciousness, then you have to, in your descriptive account, explain where one ends and the other begins. Where is the to be drawn between information and what is real? Is it ALL information? Then nothing is information. Will you turn to hermeneutics?

No one is fooled by an untrained violinist pretending to be a master, for instance. — praxis

That's so true.

So you’re saying that there’s genocidal glee, just the concept of glee, and your mind can separate glee from any actual instance of glee, such as Hitler’s alleged genocidal glee.

If I’m following what you’ve said correctly, you’ve separated the concept of glee from what you’re now referring to as an illustrative example (glee in context) of glee in order to perform an analysis of some kind.

That’s about all the sense I can make out of what you’ve written. It not clear if this somehow relates to your claim that “the aesthetic is an integral part of experience itself.”

Perhaps your analysis has revealed that you have the capacity to consider the concept of aesthetic out of context, or that having this capacity, you can apply this concept any which way that your imagination can manage. — praxis

It is rather that there is one, final context, and that is at the basic level, and this is phenomenology. On ethics and aesthetics: take lighted match and apply it to your finger. Now, there is a lot one can say about this anatomically, motivationally, psychologically, and any other context you can imagine; but put those aside and consider only the pain itself, pain simpliciter, qualia-pain if you like, or, the phenomenon of pain eidetically free, or context free. Forget about whether you think this is possible (Dennett doesn't, but that is another argument) for it being there AT ALL is a context, you can, and many do, including myself, argue. But IN this most foundational context of observing the pain just as pain and not of or in this or that, the pain can be seen most vividly for what it is, and not for what something tells us it is.

This presence is, I argue, pure, or close to pure. Entangled, yes, but here in this "reduction" it stands before one as a pure presence, what it IS as presence prior, that is, logically prior, for you can't even think of Hitler's genocidal cruelty without know what pain is to begin with that makes the whole affair so horrible.
This is what I have in mind.

you seem to have made up your own meaning of aesthetic. I’ll wager that you can’t explain what this is supposed to mean. — praxis

Thinking about the meaning of aesthetics rather than the definition of aesthetics:

The belief that the aesthetic is Uniformity within Variety goes back to at least Aristotle

Aristotle's Poetics is the first surviving philosophical treatise about the theory of drama in literary works. He wrote "Tragedy is a representation of a serious, complete action which has magnitude, in embellished speech, with each of its elements [used] separately in the [various] parts [of the play] and [represented] by people acting and not by narration, accomplishing by means of pity and terror the catharsis of such emotions."

As regards Variety, complex plots have reversals and recognitions, threats are resolved, and many types of art are blended, including language and music.
As regards Uniformity, actions should follow logically from the situation created by what has happened before, poetic narratives are unified by a plot whose logic binds up the constituent elements by necessity and probability.

As Francis Hutcheson wrote in 1725: “What we call Beautiful in Objects, to speak in the Mathematical Style, seems to be in a compound Ratio of Uniformity and Variety; so that where the Uniformity of Bodys is equal, the Beauty is as the Variety; and where the Variety is equal, the Beauty is as the Uniformity”.

IE, The belief that the aesthetic is Uniformity within Variety goes back to at least Aristotle.

The aesthetic is in the observer's experience of the object's form, not in the object's form

There are certain objective facts that may be described regarding the meaning of aesthetic, but the subjective experience itself is beyond description as that needs direct acquaintance.

Subjective experiences can include the perceived sensation of the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the redness of an evening sky, as well as aesthetic form. A subjective experience stands in contrast to a propositional attitude, a conscious visceral experience rather than an intellectual belief about the experience.

Starting with colour as an analogy, an observer observes a wavelength of 700nm. The observer can describe objective facts about the wavelength of 700nm, but cannot describe their subjective experience of the colour red. I can be described objective facts about a wavelength of 700nm, but I must have subjective acquaintance with the colour red.

Although the colour red is not in the object, the object is the cause of the subjective experience of the colour red, in that a change in the object may cause a cause in the subjective experience, ie, from red to blue. Although the object is the cause of the effect of subjective experience of red, the object does not determine that the subjective experience is red rather than blue say. The particular object is the cause of the subjective experience of red, which is external to the object, and not contained within the object.

Similarly, an observer observes a physical object, where the whole object is made up of parts, and the observer observes the parts and the relationships between the parts. The particular object is the cause of an aesthetic experience, which is external to the object, and not contained within the object. The particular form of the object is the cause of an aesthetic experience, and a subjective aesthetic experience is the effect. As effects are not contained in their causes, it is not the form of the object that is aesthetic but rather the observer's subjective experience of the form of the object.

IE, the aesthetic is in the observer's experience of the object's form, not in the object's form.

The aesthetic and Uniformity within Variety are both Kantian a priori knowledge

Kant in Critique of Reason wrote: i) "Space is a necessary a priori representation that underlies all other intuitions", ii) “any knowledge that is thus independent of experience and even of all impressions of the senses. Such knowledge is entitled a priori”, iii) “in whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them”, iv) "nothing in a priori knowledge can be ascribed to objects save what the thinking subject derives from itself".

Innate human a priori knowledge has been part of the evolution of sentient life since the Cambrian period 541 to 485 mya. Humans are born with significant innate a priori knowledge, such as the instinctive knowledge of the difference in touch between a hot and cold object, knowledge of spatial relationships in knowing whether object A is to the left or right of object B, knowledge of the difference between a red object and blue object, knowledge of the difference between horizontal and vertical lines as well as a rudimentary knowledge of the difference between good and bad, etc. If this were not the case then there would be classes in school teaching the subjective experience of hot and cold, red and blue, etc. However, whilst subjective experiences cannot be taught, the words describing these experience must be taught, whether hot and cold, chaud froid, caldo freddo, etc.

Included within such a priori knowledge is the aesthetic. 10 million people didn't visit the Louvre annually without a desire for an aesthetic experience, nor admire Derain's Collioure, never mind the classic lines of the Mercedes 560SL, the magnificence of the Empire States Building, the complex themes of Cervantes Don Quixote or the timelessness of Sade's Smooth Operator.

What these aesthetic experiences have in common is the observer's consciousness of an inexplicable, undeniable mysterious unity within what at first sight appears chaotic, unintelligible and complex. The conscious mind, in observing a world of seemingly chaotic complexity, is able to self-organise all this maelstrom of information using a priori knowledge of balance, colour, movement, scale, shape, good and bad and mixed with a fundamental morality into comprehensible and intelligible patterns of understanding - an aesthetic Uniformity within Variety.

IE, the aesthetic and Uniformity within Variety are both innate parts of the structure of the brain as Kantian a priori knowledge.

Summary

As the aesthetic as a formal arrangement of the parts within an object has been discussed since at least Aristotle, I would have thought the more difficult problem would be to give an example of an aesthetic that didn't depend on the formal arrangement of the parts within the object.

I think Nietzsche is like several truckloads of feces into which a few diamonds and sapphires have been scattered. My connection to Nietzsche deep, like in the direction of dreams. But weren't Nietzsche and K saying something similar? regarding accepting evil? — frank

They are both appalled by philosophy's attempt to rationalize the world, leaving the true, well, power and the glory behind, civilized and contained and weak and objectified and reduced. K's issue ws with Christendom, Nietzsche the same, I guess; I mean, this emasculating metaphysics that takes great possibility and turns it monkish denies the greatness, the will to push through and create. K looked also to this authenticity that is oppressed or forgotten by the neutralizing effects of bad metaphysics and cultural distractions. There is something that has nothing whatever to do with reason that is always there: actuality. The actual is not rational, not part of God's rational self actualization (Zizek has a different take on Hegel in this. Available on youtube). But then K goes north and N goes south. Heaven and Earth. (Keep in mind N adored people like Emerson and his Transcendentalism-very religious and but very vivid and full of encounter and meaning. NOT the church's conventions and liturgies.)

Could you say more about that? — frank

Metaphysics can be absurd, but then, it can be just the stark admission that all constructions of what the world is both end in aporia, openness, indeterminacy, and are part and parcel of the perceptual acts that reveal the world at the perceptual level. This latter is what Buddhism is essentially about, for what is it to meditate like this? It is a very radical process that is not confined to any particular part of things, but is the whole of things. To meditate as the Buddha tells us is to annihilate the world, the stream of existence produced moment to moment that informs us, gives us the habits of familiarity we deploy in everyday living.
Get into this deeply, and metaphysics becomes a lived reality. This is a rather complex argument, and it takes more time and writing than is allowed here. But for now, Good metaphysics begins with the observation that finitude as an imposing totality on a world that defies all totalizing, and this is exactly what Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were about, I would argue, though it would take a thesis to do so.

What's the final trouble? — frank

why are born to suffer and die? What is the nature of value, or, metavalue? To borrow a term, we "totalize" the world with our systems of understanding. There remains below this, or above it, or amidst it, actuality, which defies this, cannot be reduced to ideas we have of this. To bring Levinas' thought in, in all our ideas, the ideatum exceeds what the idea is, the desideratum exceeds what it is we desire. This is a delicate juncture. We did not invent metaphysics at the basic level. We invented a lot of bad thinking, but this terminus we encounter when we raise our fist to the sky, say, is very real. It is real in thought and its concepts, and in the actuality they try to contain.
The ethical dimension to this is most disturbing, but this takes a phenomenological approach to see what it is we are fussing about so much when we talk about ethics and aesthetics: value. There you are, seat belted in your car, upside down, the gas slowing into the passenger compartment, then you detect the hint of smoke. The metaphysics of this situation is vry real, because once you exhaust all possible accountability, there is nothing else. The gravity of the condition exceeds the explanatory totality there is to account for it.
We are not, of course IN the situation above, but to conceive it honestly shows that ethical nihilism is foundational inadequate to "totalize" what it is all about.
The final trouble is metaethics.

You may have noticed that people can and often do BS as they please about all sorts of things, well defined or not. — praxis

It's not bullshit. It's philosophy.

Although the colour red is not in the object, — RussellA

The color is not in the object but on the object.