Chapter 11: Areas of knowledge – The arts (p.442 )mrpronan.weebly.com/.../7/8/3/37835975/arts_as_an_area…  · Web viewWhat could a Mozart piano concerto be a copy of? Art does

Chapter 11: Areas of knowledge – The arts (p.442 )

In this area of knowledge we will consider four main questions, all of which are connected with the relationship between art and knowledge:

1. What is Art?2. Are aesthetic judgements objective or subjective?3. How do the arts contribute to our knowledge of the world?4. What are the similarities and differences between the arts and the sciences?

Task: Various experts in the field have considered the following ‘works of art’. Your task is to rank them in terms of how impressive they are in terms of what you deem to be art. Make a comment as to how you would justify your position.

(a) (b) (c)

(d) (e) (f)

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(g) (h) (I)

Rank in order to preference

Picture Comment

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What is art? (p. 443)

Most people would agree that for something to be a ‘work of art’, it must be man-made. Beyond this, opinions differ about what makes something art. There are three possible criteria:

1. The intentions of the artist2. The quality of the work3. The response of the spectators

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Task: Which of the following would you classify as art?

Aspect Art or not art?

Ballet

Soccer

A holiday snap-shot of Mount Everest

A painting of Mount Everest

A rock that happens to resemble a face

A child’s drawing of a face

An artist’s drawing of a face done in the naïve style of a child

Opera

Rap music

A piece of music generated by a computer

A TV soap opera

A nursery rhyme

A person dripping paint randomly on a canvas

A monkey dripping paint randomly on a canvas

A bucket and mop left in an art gallery by a cleaner

A bucket and mop exhibited in an art gallery by an artist

A meal made by a famous chef

Video games

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Intentions of the artistCalling something art because of the intentions of the artist pp.445)

Basis:

Something is a work of art if the maker intended it to evoke an aesthetic response.

If something is intended as a work of art, then it should not be made with a practical use in mind, but simply with the intension of pleasing or provoking people.

So we can say that works of art differ from natural objects in that they are made with an intention, and they differ from everyday objects in that they are made with the specific intention to please or provoke a response rather than for some practical end.

Criticism:

Despite the appeal of the intention criterion, some critics have doubted that simply intending to be art is enough to magically transform it into art. For example, if I take my desk with papers and a half-drunk cup of coffee on it, put it in an art gallery with a glass case around it, and call it Teacher’s Work Desk, it is magically transformed into a work simply because I intend it to be so?

There is also the problem of where art is judged merely by the intention of the creator with no regard for its quality.

Taken together, these two criticisms of the intentions criterion suggest that the intentions of the creator are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for something to be a work of art.

Tracey Emin’s My Bed

Task: Imagine that Tracey Emin’s work My Bed comes up for sale. Would you be happy for the government to spend people’s tax money to buy the work for your local art gallery?

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Quality of the work The second criterion for distinguishing art from non-art is the intrinsic quality of the work. The criterion is closely connected with the idea of skill.

Calling something art because of the quality of the work (p.447)

Basis:

The idea of quality is very closely connected with the idea of skill. We expect the artist to have a high level of technical competence.

The belief that a work of art should have some kind of intrinsic quality has often been associated with the idea of beauty. A great work of art is a perfect combination of content (what it shows/depicts) and form (how it shows it – such things as unity, order, rhythm, balance, proportion, harmony and symmetry).

A great deal of modern art may seem less concerned to produce beautiful things which pleases the senses than to shock or challenge the viewer.

Criticism:

A work of art may be technically excellent but lack originality, e.g. kitsch art – clichéd or mass-produced art, forgeries.Perhaps the most famous forger of paintings was the Dutch artist Han Van Meegeren who painted some fake Vermeers (17th century Dutch painter) in the 1930s that fooled the art world and were widely accepted as genuine

Is the forgery on the left or right?

The other side of this argument is that a price of art may be original but lack technical skill, e.g. Picasso’s Bull’s Head http://www.pablopicasso.org/bull-head.jsp

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Response of Spectators One of the key questions in thinking about this criterion is which spectators we should appeal to. Since ‘the general public’ usually prefer the familiar to the strange and content to form, they have often been hostile to new artistic movements, and many artists have had little time for their opinions.

Calling something art because of the response of the spectators (p. 449)

Basis:

A work of art requires people to appreciate it. ‘Experts’ may understand the meaning of a work of art better than the artist who

made the work.

Criticism:

The response to a work of art may: Change over time (or may be just a fashion) Differ between ordinary people and ‘experts’.

Calling something art because it is found in an art gallery (p. 451)

French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) took everyday objects, renamed them and exhibited them as art called ‘readymades’. Perhaps the most famous of Duchamp’s readymades was his work called The Fountain, which was a white porcelain urinal with the pseudonym ‘R Mutt’ daubed on it.

So where does art begin? Is everything art? Or does that devalue the idea of art? Or is everything art if you just look at it differently?

Judging art (p. 452)

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Are aesthetic judgements objective or subjective

Examples of canonical works (the ‘classics’):

Literature: Oedipus Rex (Sophocles), works of Shakespeare and GoetheVisual arts: Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso

Music: Mozart, Beethoven

How far are our judgements about what distinguishes good art from bad objective and how far are they influenced by the culture in which we grow up and our personal tastes?

The paradox of aesthetic judgement (p. 452)

On the one hand, we take seriously the idea that there are standards of aesthetic judgment and that some judgements are better than others; on the other hand, we say that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and ‘there is no accounting for taste’. So it is accepted that there are standards to judge by, but different people have different tastes, which are fully valid for each of them.

Should aesthetic judgements be disinterested? (p. 453)

According to Immanuel Kant, there is a big difference between judgements of tastes and aesthetic judgements. For, unlike judgements of taste, aesthetic judgements make a universal claim and have a sense of ‘ought’ built into them.

If I say, ‘I like this painting’ and you say you don’t like it; these two statements can coexist.

If I say that the painting is beautiful and you say that it is not beautiful, the two statements contradict each other. To say that something is beautiful implies that other people ought to find it beautiful.

Kant (1724–1804) said that, unlike personal tastes, aesthetic judgements are disinterested. If you like a piece of music because it reminds you of a happy time in your life, you are interested. To be disinterested, we should go beyond our personal tastes and preferences so that we can appreciate a work of art on its merits.

Note: Disinterested is not the same as uninterested. Disinterested means free from bias and self-interest, which help us to make objective aesthetic judgements

Aesthetic judgement parallel with sport: someone may not like a sportsman but may appreciate that he/she is technically good.

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Are there universal standards in art? (p. 454)

Psychological factors

Since all human beings share the same perceptual equipment, you might expect to find some similarities in our aesthetic judgements. Consider the following paintings:

J.M. Turner’s The Lake, Petworth: Sunset, a Stag Drinking

David Bomberg’s The Mud Bath

Task: Write down five to ten adjectives that come to mind when you look at the first painting. Now do the same for the second painting. Compare your list with someone else’s. How similar are your lists? What, if anything, does this suggest to you about the nature of aesthetic judgement?

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Task: Look at a selection of other paintings:

Do horizontal lines in paintings always give a feeling of peace? Do diagonal lines generally give a disturbing feeling?

Komar and Melamid

Further evidence for the idea that some aesthetic judgements are universal forms from two Russian artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, who set out to discover what kinds of painting people find most attractive. They examined the most popular paintings across a wide range of cultures found that popular paintings depict landscapes in which the viewer can see without being seen.

They investigated the artistic preferences of people from ten different countries, and discovered some fascinating shared tastes. People liked realistic paintings. They liked landscapes. And – here it got interesting – they also liked the colour blue to figure prominently.

They also liked wide-open areas, water scenes, and human figures and animals to be present. It didn’t matter whether they lived in urban or rural areas - that was the overwhelming preference for the ideal image.

Possible explanations: Our preference for such landscapes may result from our evolved survival

instincts. The world is dominated by US culture → globalisation of taste.

Komar and Melamid also found a similar universality in musical taste. Sense of rhythm in music may reflect the human pulse.

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The USA’s Most Wanted Painting (determined by popular choice)

Cultural differences (p. 456)

Comparing art is difficult: some people are inclined to see similarities between things and others to see differences.

Task: How much can we learn about the way a culture sees the world by studying the art that it produces?

Look at the following pictures of a location in England; a Chinese artist drew one and an English artist drew the other. Figure out which one the Chinese artist drew

(a) (b)

Other examples:

Opera: Chinese and European opera differ greatly – those accustomed to one tradition may – initially at least – find it difficult to make sense of what is going on in the other.

Sport: baseball differs from cricket.

Contrasting cultures may not understand the nature of art in other cultures without help.

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Golden Ratio

There are also rules for aesthetic beauty like the Golden Ratio. This is a mathematical formula applying to two quantities (the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one) which can be turned into a rectangular representation looking like this:

This rule can then be applied to art and architecture, examples of which appear in the works of many artists and architects, notably Leonardo da Vinci, Salvador Dali, and Le Corbusier.

Golden Ratio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmaVqkR0ZXg

Golden Ratio and Fibonacci Numbers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vVxL60YFJU

Vitruvian Man – The beauty of diagrams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGUOtwDhyzc&list=PLWeEI4Je28tfUc_vqlgLlHg4d_Bw4Qb_b

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Art and knowledge (p. 457)

Since works of art do not have any practical function like other man-made objects, you might think that their only purpose is to give pleasure. Doubtless, works of art do frequently give us pleasure, but many people would say that they also contribute to our knowledge of the world. Let us consider three popular theories about the nature of art:

1. Art as imitation 2. Art as communication 3. Art as communication

Art as imitation

Mimesis is Greek for ‘imitation’. The mimetic theory suggests that the purpose of art is to copy reality. Example artists include Michelangelo (1475–1564) and Auguste Rodin (1840–1917).

Important developments:

Fifteenth century: development of perspective

Nineteenth century: invention of the camera

Why try to copy reality in paint when it can be copied at the click of a button? Led to revolutionary changes in the nature of visual art, music and literature.

Criticisms: The ‘copy’ theory does not apply to music. What could a Mozart piano concerto be

a copy of? Art does not merely copy reality; it creatively interprets it. Paul Klee (1878–1940), a Swiss painter, said that ‘Art does not reproduce the

visible; rather, it makes visible’, i.e. it helps us see things we would not otherwise notice. For example, an artist may reveal the beauty of the everyday object, or the geometric forms underlying the human body, which we have never noticed before.

Art can also influence the way we subsequently view the world, e.g. paintings, plays, books, music. For example, we may see faces differently after Rembrandt’s self-portraits or feel differently about the seasons after Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

While new movements in the arts challenge our understanding of reality, they can in time lose their shock value and simply become part of the way in which a culture sees the world. Thus what is avant-garde art to one generation may be normal to the next and kitsch to the third.

Task: Find out some examples of great artists who were not recognized by their contemporaries. Give some examples of great artists who were recognized by their contemporaries. What conclusions would you draw from this?

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Art as communication (p. 460)

‘The language of art’ is a form of communication between the artist and the spectator.

Implies there may be a ‘grammar’ and ‘vocabulary’ of art that needs to be learned to allow understanding.

Art can arouse in a way that words cannot, e.g. the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Art as communication has:

Breadth, e.g. literature can project us beyond personal experience and help us to learn from others

Depth, e.g. ordinary language may not adequately express deep emotions. According to the philosopher R.G. Collingwood, ‘The artist proper is a person who, grappling with the problem of expressing a certain emotion, says, “I want to get this clear”’.

Art as education (p. 461)

According to a third theory of the arts, the arts have a moral and educative role. The connections between the arts and ethics is said to derive from the fact that they provoke emotions that influence our behaviour. They also shape our attitudes by offering us a range of role models. For the ancient Greeks, Homer’s Iliad played a key role in a young man’s moral education. At a more general level, it could be said that great art challenges us to question our assumptions by giving us a different perspective on things. So, in this broad sense, we might describe art as a moral provocation.

Thinking more about the relationship between art and ethics, we might say that the arts broaden our awareness, develop our empathy and sharpen our intuitions. Literature can develop our ability to empathise with other people by enabling us to imaginatively project ourselves into situations that lie beyond the frontiers of our own experience. For example, by reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, one can get a vivid sense of what life was like in the US during the Great Depression, and the kinds of challenges that people faced.

Whatever your view of the effect of the arts on our emotions, there are reasons for doubting that they have a civilising influence on people. Some people have argued that even morally uplifting art stimulates sentimentality rather than action. You may weep at scenes of injustice in a movie, thereby convincing yourself that you are a caring individual, and yet be blind to injustice in the real world.

In the absence of clear evidence, one way or the other, the belief that the arts can civilise us may come down to a matter of faith, although we would probably all like to believe that it is true.

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Science, art and truth (pp. 463)

Whatever the relationship between the arts and knowledge, there seems to be a big difference between the contribution made by the arts to our understanding of the world and that made by the sciences. Indeed, these two areas of knowledge have often been separated by a gulf of mutual incomprehension. On the one hand, some artists accuse the sciences of robbing the world of its mystery. On the other hand, the arts have sometimes been dismissed by the scientifically minded as little more than a frivolous diversion.

Similarities and differences: art and science

Both Art Science

Look at the patterns in things.

Expresses patterns in more altruistic, intuitive, imaginative forms.

Expresses patterns in mathematics, logic, formulae, reason.

An artist needs to impose some kind of rational control on their creative insights while a scientist needs to have a good imagination to come up with new ways of looking at things

Appeals more to imagination.

Appeals more to reason.

May be seen as ‘beautiful’, e.g. Einstein said that the theory of relativity was ‘too beautiful to be false’

Mathematical ‘beauty’ is no guarantee of truth.

Does not always need prior knowledge to appreciate.

Usually needs prior knowledge to appreciate.

Task: Consider the following words:

Beauty, creation, discovery, emotion, fact, fiction, general, inside, outside, particular and reason

Is it possible to place any of the aforementioned words into the category of Art or Science?

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Discovered or invented? (p. 465)

One important difference between science and art would seem to be that while scientific laws are discovered, works of art are invented. However, many great artists have felt that their work is as much one of discovery as of invention – that the form is somehow already out-there waiting to be unpacked. The novelist, Vladimir Nabokov, said ‘The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamouring to become visible’. Consider also Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures, The Prisoners.

Just as some people have argued that art is as much discovery as invention, so others have argued that science is as much invention as discovery. To support, this idea, they point out that even if a scientific law is useful and illuminating, it may eventually turn out to be false i.e. Newtonian Physics.

Nevertheless, it may still make sense to say that science is more discovered than invented, and that art is more invented than discovered.

Science and art as complements (p. 466)

Science and art could be seen as complementary ways of making sense of the world: science looks at things from outside; art looks at things from inside. Einstein once said that science does not give the taste of soup; while science can tell you what soup is made of and why it is good for you, it has nothing to say about what it feels like to drink soup on a cold day. As such, subjective experience is important as well as objective, measurable facts.

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The arts and truth (pp. 466)

The paradox of fiction: Fiction can reveal deep truths about the human condition and therefore humans often turn to fiction in search of truth. The kind of truth we find in the arts does seem to be different from that found in the sciences. If two scientific theories contradict one another, and one is said to be true, then we must conclude that the other is false. But when it comes to the arts, we may feel that two quite different works can be equally revealing of the truth.

Real life situations and knowledge questions in the Arts

Human sciences, the arts: What does inflight movie censorship tell us about cultural differences?http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/12/travel/secrets-of-in-flight-movies/index.html

The arts, human sciences, language: What caused the rise and fall of graffiti in New York?http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28638691

The arts, human sciences, ethics: What is the relationship between the arts and change in society?http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/25/disobedient-objects

The arts: Does "art facilitate the learning of everything else"?http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/why-kids-need-arts-in-education/373640/

The arts: When you can't see the artwork, is it still art?http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/jul/09/secret-art-barsuglia-mojave-swimming-pool-ai-weiwei-buried-vases-warsaw

The arts, human sciences, ethics: To what extent do books have the power to change the world?http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/why-the-cia-distributed-pocket-size-copies-of-doctor-zhivago-in-the-soviet-union/371369/

The arts: Is photography 'art'?http://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-27661889

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The arts: How can the arts be used to control us?http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/jun/09/soviet-propaganda-art-posters-in-pictures

The arts, technology: Can Google glasses make the arts more meaningful?http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/how-google-glass-could-change-the-way-we-view-art-9468326.html

The arts: To what extent should photographers involve themselves with their subjects?http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/apr/20/danny-lyon-photographer-outlaw-bikers

The arts, history, ethics: Are historically accurate films more worthy of artistic acclaim?http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/30/can-historically-inaccurate-movies-win-oscars

The arts: What part do the arts play in shaping our outlooks on life?http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/heroine-addict-can-a-good-book-actually-change-our-personalities-9059955.html

The arts and sense perception: Is this a reasonable theory as to why the golden ratio is pleasing to the eye? And does that prove once and for all that the objectivist view of art (i.e. that there are objective 'rules' that make art either 'good' or 'bad') is the correct one? http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/dec/28/golden-ratio-us-academic

The arts: Is 'Yellowism' a legitimate art movement? If not, why not?http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/founder-of-yellowism-movement-vladimir-umanets-admits-defacing-valuable-mark-rothko-painting-at-the-8201780.html

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Source: Dunn, Michael. Real life situations and knowledge questions for the arts (14th May 2013). theoryofknowledge.net. http://www.theoryofknowledge.net/areas-of-knowledge/the-arts/real-life-situations-and-knowledge-questions-for-the-arts/ Last accessed: 19th October 2015

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