A More Beautiful Question the Spiritual in Poetry and Art
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Question of the Month
What is Art? and/or What is Beauty?
The following answers to this artful question each win a random book.
Art is something we do, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, but it is even more personal than that: it'southward about sharing the way we feel the world, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the communication of intimate concepts that cannot be faithfully portrayed past words solitary. And because words lone are not enough, nosotros must find some other vehicle to bear our intent. But the content that nosotros instill on or in our called media is not in itself the art. Art is to exist constitute in how the media is used, the way in which the content is expressed.
What and then is dazzler? Dazzler is much more than cosmetic: it is not virtually prettiness. In that location are plenty of pretty pictures bachelor at the neighborhood dwelling house furnishing store; but these we might not refer to as beautiful; and information technology is not hard to find works of artistic expression that we might agree are cute that are not necessarily pretty. Beauty is rather a measure out of bear upon, a mensurate of emotion. In the context of art, dazzler is the gauge of successful advice between participants – the conveyance of a concept between the artist and the perceiver. Beautiful art is successful in portraying the artist's nigh profound intended emotions, the desired concepts, whether they be pretty and vivid, or night and sinister. But neither the creative person nor the observer can be sure of successful communication in the end. So beauty in art is eternally subjective.
Wm. Joseph Nieters, Lake Ozark, Missouri
Works of art may elicit a sense of wonder or cynicism, promise or despair, adoration or spite; the piece of work of art may be direct or circuitous, subtle or explicit, intelligible or obscure; and the subjects and approaches to the creation of art are bounded only by the imagination of the artist. Consequently, I believe that defining fine art based upon its content is a doomed enterprise.
Now a theme in aesthetics, the study of art, is the merits that there is a detachment or distance betwixt works of art and the flow of everyday life. Thus, works of art rise like islands from a current of more pragmatic concerns. When you step out of a river and onto an island, you've reached your destination. Similarly, the artful attitude requires you to care for artistic feel every bit an finish-in-itself: art asks us to get in empty of preconceptions and nourish to the way in which we experience the work of art. And although a person can have an 'artful experience' of a natural scene, flavour or texture, fine art is different in that it is produced. Therefore, art is the intentional communication of an experience equally an end-in-itself. The content of that feel in its cultural context may determine whether the artwork is popular or ridiculed, significant or piffling, but it is art either style.
One of the initial reactions to this approach may be that it seems overly broad. An older brother who sneaks up behind his younger sibling and shouts "Booo!" tin be said to be creating fine art. But isn't the difference between this and a Freddy Krueger picture show just one of degree? On the other hand, my definition would exclude graphics used in advertising or political propaganda, every bit they are created every bit a means to an end and not for their own sakes. Furthermore, 'advice' is not the best word for what I have in listen considering it implies an unwarranted intention well-nigh the content represented. Artful responses are often underdetermined by the creative person'south intentions.
Mike Mallory, Everett, WA
The primal divergence between art and dazzler is that art is about who has produced it, whereas dazzler depends on who's looking.
Of course at that place are standards of beauty – that which is seen as 'traditionally' beautiful. The game changers – the square pegs, and then to speak – are those who saw traditional standards of dazzler and decided specifically to go confronting them, peradventure just to prove a point. Take Picasso, Munch, Schoenberg, to proper noun only three. They take made a stand against these norms in their art. Otherwise their art is like all other art: its only function is to be experienced, appraised, and understood (or not).
Art is a means to state an opinion or a feeling, or else to create a unlike view of the world, whether it exist inspired by the work of other people or something invented that's entirely new. Beauty is whatever aspect of that or anything else that makes an private feel positive or grateful. Beauty solitary is not art, only art can be made of, about or for beautiful things. Beauty can be plant in a snowy mountain scene: art is the photograph of it shown to family, the oil interpretation of it hung in a gallery, or the music score recreating the scene in crotchets and quavers.
However, art is non necessarily positive: information technology can exist deliberately hurtful or displeasing: information technology can make yous think near or consider things that yous would rather not. Only if it evokes an emotion in you, then it is art.
Chiara Leonardi, Reading, Berks
Art is a way of grasping the world. Not but the physical earth, which is what science attempts to do; but the whole world, and specifically, the man earth, the globe of society and spiritual feel.
Art emerged effectually 50,000 years ago, long earlier cities and civilisation, even so in forms to which we can however directly chronicle. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves, which and then startled Picasso, take been carbon-dated at effectually 17,000 years one-time. Now, post-obit the invention of photography and the devastating attack made by Duchamp on the self-appointed Fine art Establishment [see Brief Lives this event], fine art cannot be only defined on the footing of concrete tests like 'fidelity of representation' or vague abstract concepts like 'beauty'. So how can we define art in terms applying to both cavern-dwellers and mod city sophisticates? To practice this we need to inquire: What does art do? And the answer is surely that information technology provokes an emotional, rather than a simply cognitive response. One way of approaching the trouble of defining art, and so, could be to say: Art consists of shareable ideas that accept a shareable emotional touch. Art need not produce beautiful objects or events, since a great piece of art could validly arouse emotions other than those aroused by beauty, such every bit terror, anxiety, or laughter. Yet to derive an adequate philosophical theory of fine art from this understanding means tackling the concept of 'emotion' head on, and philosophers take been notoriously reluctant to do this. But not all of them: Robert Solomon's volume The Passions (1993) has made an splendid first, and this seems to me to be the way to go.
It won't be easy. Poor old Richard Rorty was jumped on from a very great peak when all he said was that literature, verse, patriotism, love and stuff similar that were philosophically important. Fine art is vitally of import to maintaining broad standards in civilisation. Its pedigree long predates philosophy, which is but three,000 years old, and science, which is a mere 500 years onetime. Art deserves much more attending from philosophers.
Alistair MacFarlane, Gwynedd
Some years ago I went looking for art. To brainstorm my journey I went to an art gallery. At that stage art to me was whatever I found in an art gallery. I institute paintings, generally, and because they were in the gallery I recognised them as art. A detail Rothko painting was one colour and large. I observed a farther slice that did not have an obvious characterization. It was also of one colour – white – and gigantically large, occupying 1 complete wall of the very high and spacious room and continuing on small roller wheels. On closer inspection I saw that it was a moveable wall, not a piece of art. Why could one piece of work be considered 'fine art' and the other not?
The reply to the question could, perhaps, be found in the criteria of Berys Gaut to determine if some artefact is, indeed, art – that art pieces function simply as pieces of art, but as their creators intended.
Simply were they beautiful? Did they evoke an emotional response in me? Beauty is frequently associated with art. There is sometimes an expectation of encountering a 'beautiful' object when going to come across a work of art, be it painting, sculpture, book or functioning. Of form, that expectation chop-chop changes as 1 widens the range of installations encountered. The archetype example is Duchamp'south Fountain (1917), a rather un-beautiful urinal.
Can we define beauty? Let me try by suggesting that beauty is the capacity of an artefact to evoke a pleasurable emotional response. This might be categorised as the 'like' response.
I definitely did not like Fountain at the initial level of appreciation. There was skill, of course, in its construction. But what was the skill in its presentation as art?
And then I began to accomplish a definition of art. A work of art is that which asks a question which a not-art object such as a wall does not: What am I? What am I communicating? The responses, both of the creator artist and of the recipient audition, vary, but they invariably involve a judgement, a response to the invitation to answer. The answer, too, goes towards deciphering that deeper question – the 'Who am I?' which goes towards defining humanity.
Neil Hallinan, Maynooth, Co. Kildare
'Art' is where we make pregnant beyond linguistic communication. Art consists in the making of meaning through intelligent agency, eliciting an aesthetic response. It's a ways of advice where language is not sufficient to explicate or describe its content. Art can return visible and known what was previously unspoken. Because what art expresses and evokes is in function ineffable, we find information technology difficult to ascertain and delineate it. It is known through the feel of the audience as well every bit the intention and expression of the artist. The significant is fabricated by all the participants, and then can never be fully known. It is multifarious and on-going. Even a disagreement is a tension which is itself an expression of something.
Art drives the evolution of a civilisation, both supporting the establishment and too preventing destructive messages from being silenced – art leads, mirrors and reveals change in politics and morality. Fine art plays a central office in the creation of civilization, and is an outpouring of idea and ideas from it, and so it cannot be fully understood in isolation from its context. Paradoxically, still, art can communicate beyond language and fourth dimension, appealing to our common humanity and linking disparate communities. Perhaps if wider audiences engaged with a greater diverseness of the world's creative traditions it could engender increased tolerance and mutual respect.
Some other inescapable facet of art is that information technology is a commodity. This fact feeds the creative process, whether motivating the artist to form an item of monetary value, or to avoid creating one, or to artistically commodify the aesthetic experience. The commodification of art also affects who is considered qualified to create fine art, annotate on it, and even ascertain it, equally those who benefit most strive to proceed the value of 'art objects' high. These influences must feed into a culture's understanding of what art is at whatever time, making thoughts about art culturally dependent. Still, this commodification and the consequent closely-guarded role of the art critic also gives ascension to a counter culture inside art culture, often expressed through the creation of art that cannot exist sold. The stratification of art by value and the resultant tension also adds to its pregnant, and the meaning of fine art to society.
Catherine Bosley, Monk Soham, Suffolk
Kickoff of all we must recognize the obvious. 'Art' is a word, and words and concepts are organic and modify their meaning through time. So in the olden days, fine art meant craft. It was something you could excel at through practice and hard work. You learnt how to paint or sculpt, and you lot learnt the special symbolism of your era. Through Romanticism and the birth of individualism, art came to mean originality. To do something new and never-heard-of defined the artist. His or her personality became essentially every bit important as the artwork itself. During the era of Modernism, the search for originality led artists to reevaluate art. What could art do? What could it represent? Could y'all paint movement (Cubism, Futurism)? Could you paint the non-fabric (Abstract Expressionism)? Fundamentally: could anything be regarded every bit fine art? A way of trying to solve this problem was to look beyond the work itself, and focus on the art earth: art was that which the institution of art – artists, critics, art historians, etc – was prepared to regard as art, and which was fabricated public through the institution, e.g. galleries. That's Institutionalism – made famous through Marcel Duchamp's set-mades.
Institutionalism has been the prevailing notion through the later part of the twentieth century, at least in academia, and I would say information technology still holds a firm grip on our conceptions. One case is the Swedish creative person Anna Odell. Her motion-picture show sequence Unknown woman 2009-349701, for which she faked psychosis to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, was widely debated, and by many was not regarded every bit art. Just because it was debated past the art earth, it succeeded in breaking into the art world, and is today regarded equally art, and Odell is regarded an artist.
Of course there are those who effort and suspension out of this hegemony, for case past refusing to play by the art world'south unwritten rules. Andy Warhol with his Factory was one, even though he is today totally embraced past the art world. Another instance is Damien Hirst, who, much like Warhol, pays people to create the physical manifestations of his ideas. He doesn't utilize galleries and other art earth-approved arenas to advertise, and instead sells his objects direct to private individuals. This liberal approach to capitalism is one way of attacking the hegemony of the art globe.
What does all this teach us about art? Probably that fine art is a fleeting and chimeric concept. We will always have art, only for the most part we will only really acquire in retrospect what the fine art of our era was.
Tommy Törnsten, Linköping, Sweden
Art periods such as Classical, Byzantine, neo-Classical, Romantic, Modern and mail service-Modern reflect the changing nature of art in social and cultural contexts; and shifting values are evident in varying content, forms and styles. These changes are encompassed, more or less in sequence, past Imitationalist, Emotionalist, Expressivist, Formalist and Institutionalist theories of art. In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), Arthur Danto claims a distinctiveness for art that inextricably links its instances with acts of observation, without which all that could be are 'fabric counterparts' or 'mere real things' rather than artworks. Notwithstanding the competing theories, works of art can be seen to possess 'family resemblances' or 'strands of resemblance' linking very different instances equally art. Identifying instances of art is relatively straightforward, but a definition of art that includes all possible cases is elusive. Consequently, fine art has been claimed to be an 'open' concept.
According to Raymond Williams' Keywords (1976), capitalised 'Art' appears in full general use in the nineteenth century, with 'Fine Art'; whereas 'fine art' has a history of previous applications, such as in music, poetry, comedy, tragedy and dance; and we should also mention literature, media arts, even gardening, which for David Cooper in A Philosophy of Gardens (2006) can provide "epiphanies of co-dependence". Art, then, is perhaps "annihilation presented for our artful contemplation" – a phrase coined by John Davies, former tutor at the School of Art Educational activity, Birmingham, in 1971 – although 'annihilation' may seem too inclusive. Gaining our aesthetic interest is at to the lowest degree a necessary requirement of fine art. Sufficiency for something to be art requires significance to fine art appreciators which endures equally long equally tokens or types of the artwork persist. Paradoxically, such significance is sometimes attributed to objects neither intended as fine art, nor especially intended to exist perceived aesthetically – for instance, votive, devotional, commemorative or commonsensical artefacts. Furthermore, aesthetic interests can be eclipsed past dubious investment practices and social kudos. When combined with glory and harmful forms of narcissism, they can egregiously impact artistic actuality. These interests can be overriding, and spawn products masquerading as fine art. And so it'due south up to discerning observers to spot any Fads, Fakes and Fantasies (Sjoerd Hannema, 1970).
Colin Brookes, Loughborough, Leicestershire
For me art is nothing more and cypher less than the creative power of individuals to limited their understanding of some attribute of private or public life, similar dearest, conflict, fear, or hurting. Equally I read a war verse form past Edward Thomas, enjoy a Mozart pianoforte concerto, or contemplate a G.C. Escher drawing, I am frequently emotionally inspired past the moment and intellectually stimulated past the thought-process that follows. At this moment of discovery I humbly realize my views may be those shared by thousands, fifty-fifty millions across the globe. This is due in large office to the mass media's power to command and exploit our emotions. The commercial success of a performance or production becomes the metric by which art is now about exclusively gauged: quality in art has been sadly reduced to equating nifty art with sale of books, number of views, or the downloading of recordings. Too bad if personal sensibilities about a particular piece of fine art are lost in the greater rush for immediate acceptance.
Then where does that leave the subjective notion that beauty can yet be found in art? If beauty is the outcome of a process past which art gives pleasure to our senses, so information technology should remain a matter of personal discernment, fifty-fifty if exterior forces clamour to take control of it. In other words, nobody, including the art critic, should be able to tell the private what is beautiful and what is not. The world of fine art is one of a abiding tension between preserving private tastes and promoting pop acceptance.
Ian Malcomson, Victoria, British Columbia
What we perceive as beautiful does not offend usa on any level. It is a personal sentence, a subjective opinion. A retentiveness from in one case we gazed upon something cute, a sight e'er so pleasing to the senses or to the eye, oft fourth dimension stays with united states forever. I shall never forget walking into Balzac's house in French republic: the odour of lilies was and then overwhelming that I had a numinous moment. The intensity of the emotion evoked may not exist possible to explicate. I don't feel it'south important to debate why I retrieve a flower, painting, dusk or how the light streaming through a stained-drinking glass window is beautiful. The ability of the sights create an emotional reaction in me. I don't wait or business concern myself that others volition concur with me or not. Can all agree that an act of kindness is beautiful?
A thing of beauty is a whole; elements coming together making it so. A single brush stroke of a painting does not solitary create the impact of beauty, but all together, it becomes beautiful. A perfect bloom is cute, when all of the petals together form its perfection; a pleasant, intoxicating aroma is also part of the beauty.
In thinking virtually the question, 'What is beauty?', I've just come abroad with the idea that I am the beholder whose eye it is in. Suffice it to say, my private assessment of what strikes me every bit beautiful is all I demand to know.
Cheryl Anderson, Kenilworth, Illinois
Stendhal said, "Beauty is the hope of happiness", but this didn't get to the center of the matter. Whose beauty are we talking most? Whose happiness?
Consider if a snake made art. What would it believe to exist cute? What would it condescend to make? Snakes have poor eyesight and detect the world largely through a chemosensory organ, the Jacobson'south organ, or through heat-sensing pits. Would a movie in its homo form even make sense to a snake? So their fine art, their dazzler, would be entirely alien to ours: it would not be visual, and even if they had songs they would be foreign; after all, snakes do not have ears, they sense vibrations. And so fine art would be sensed, and songs would exist felt, if information technology is even possible to conceive that idea.
From this perspective – a view low to the ground – we can encounter that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. Information technology may cross our lips to speak of the nature of beauty in billowy language, just we practice and so entirely with a forked tongue if we do then seriously. The aesthetics of representing dazzler ought non to fool united states into thinking beauty, as some abstract concept, truly exists. It requires a viewer and a context, and the value we identify on sure combinations of colors or sounds over others speaks of nothing more than preference. Our desire for pictures, moving or otherwise, is because our organs developed in such a fashion. A snake would have no use for the visual earth.
I am thankful to have human art over snake art, but I would no doubt be amazed at serpentine fine art. Information technology would require an intellectual sloughing of many conceptions we take for granted. For that, considering the possibility of this farthermost thought is worthwhile: if snakes could write poetry, what would information technology be?
Derek Halm, Portland, Oregon
[A: Sssibilance and sussssuration – Ed.]
The questions, 'What is fine art?' and 'What is beauty?' are different types and shouldn't exist conflated.
With boring predictability, almost all gimmicky discussers of art lapse into a 'relative-off', whereby they go to annoying lengths to demonstrate how open-minded they are and how ineluctably loose the concept of art is. If art is just whatever yous desire it to exist, can nosotros not but finish the conversation in that location? Information technology's a done deal. I'll throw playdough on to a canvas, and we tin pretend to brandish our modern credentials of acceptance and insight. This just doesn't work, and nosotros all know it. If art is to mean annihilation, there has to be some working definition of what information technology is. If art tin can be annihilation to anybody at anytime, and so there ends the discussion. What makes art special – and worth discussing – is that information technology stands above or outside everyday things, such as everyday food, paintwork, or sounds. Art comprises special or exceptional dishes, paintings, and music.
So what, then, is my definition of art? Briefly, I believe at that place must be at to the lowest degree two considerations to label something as 'art'. The kickoff is that in that location must be something recognizable in the mode of 'author-to-audition reception'. I mean to say, there must exist the recognition that something was fabricated for an audience of some kind to receive, discuss or enjoy. Implicit in this point is the evident recognizability of what the art actually is – in other words, the writer doesn't have to tell you it's art when you otherwise wouldn't have any idea. The 2d point is but the recognition of skill: some obvious skill has to be involved in making art. This, in my view, would exist the minimum requirements – or definition – of fine art. Even if you disagree with the particulars, some definition is required to make anything at all fine art. Otherwise, what are we even discussing? I'm breaking the mold and ask for brass tacks.
Brannon McConkey, Tennessee
Author of Pupil of Life: Why Becoming Engaged in Life, Art, and Philosophy Can Lead to a Happier Existence
Human beings announced to have a coercion to categorize, to organize and define. We seek to impose club on a welter of sense-impressions and memories, seeing regularities and patterns in repetitions and associations, ever on the picket for correlations, eager to decide cause and effect, so that we might give sense to what might otherwise seem random and inconsequential. However, particularly in the concluding century, we have besides learned to take pleasure in the reflection of unstructured perceptions; our creative ways of seeing and listening take expanded to cover disharmony and irregularity. This has meant that culturally, an ever-widening gap has grown betwixt the attitudes and opinions of the majority, who proceed to define art in traditional ways, having to do with order, harmony, representation; and the minority, who expect for originality, who try to see the world anew, and strive for deviation, and whose critical do is rooted in abstraction. In between there are many who abjure both extremes, and who both find and give pleasure both in defining a personal vision and in practising craftsmanship.
In that location will always be a challenge to traditional concepts of art from the daze of the new, and tensions around the appropriateness of our agreement. That is how things should exist, every bit innovators button at the boundaries. At the same time, we will continue to take pleasance in the beauty of a mathematical equation, a finely-tuned machine, a successful scientific experiment, the engineering of landing a probe on a comet, an accomplished verse form, a hitting portrait, the sound-earth of a symphony. We apportion significance and meaning to what nosotros find of value and wish to share with our fellows. Our fine art and our definitions of beauty reflect our human nature and the multiplicity of our artistic efforts.
In the finish, because of our individuality and our varied histories and traditions, our debates will always be inconclusive. If nosotros are wise, nosotros will look and listen with an open spirit, and sometimes with a wry grinning, always celebrating the diversity of human being imaginings and achievements.
David Howard, Church building Stretton, Shropshire
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