The Goal of Art
The following is from an interview with Graham Harman about Speculative Realism. Harman discusses how Science provides a different kind of knowledge than Philosophy and at one point he says about Art that:
I agree that great Art produces something whose imagery is not paraphraseable, "something to which no paraphrase ever does justice" but I doubt this is the goal of Art, but rather the effect of a great work of Art. Art to my mind can never be understood by a simple list of facts, but I think that's in part because what we experience in such works as such is not fully paraphraseable, there's always more that can be said or is felt.
Great works of art exert power that is not diminished over time, power that goes beyond the normative bounds of any observer. I think this is only possible if force of these works reaches certain objective truths about the world that, if we have sufficient knowledge and emotion, can't be avoided because their power consists in their spontaneous ability to continue to generate new or deeper thoughts, newer more meaningful narratives in observers.
What do you think the goal of a work is?
[side question: Is a work of art a "something" ?]
One fails as a scientist if one cannot not replace a name such as ‘Pluto’ with increasingly accurate properties of what we now call the dwarf planet Pluto. But this has never been the case in the arts. We do not understand a painting by Picasso by discovering an ever-lengthening list of true facts about it. The goal of art is not to create paraphraseable imagery, but to create something to which no paraphrase ever does justice.
I agree that great Art produces something whose imagery is not paraphraseable, "something to which no paraphrase ever does justice" but I doubt this is the goal of Art, but rather the effect of a great work of Art. Art to my mind can never be understood by a simple list of facts, but I think that's in part because what we experience in such works as such is not fully paraphraseable, there's always more that can be said or is felt.
Great works of art exert power that is not diminished over time, power that goes beyond the normative bounds of any observer. I think this is only possible if force of these works reaches certain objective truths about the world that, if we have sufficient knowledge and emotion, can't be avoided because their power consists in their spontaneous ability to continue to generate new or deeper thoughts, newer more meaningful narratives in observers.
What do you think the goal of a work is?
[side question: Is a work of art a "something" ?]
Comments (86)
To make us better people. To communicate quality.
If this is your understanding, Cavacava, can you explain why art is not paraphrasable?
To communicate feeling/value/meaning.
As much a something as anything else.
I don't think artworks provide discursive explanations of what they are. The aesthetic effect we experience from certain works of art describe a spectrum of experience which is not amenable to discursive explanation because it expands beyond our typical conceptualization of the subject by opening new ground and expanding our conception of what the subject entails . The experience of art , the aesthetic effect is lost in any attempt at interpretation of what is experienced. If there is no remainder, nothing left out of the explanation then what is explained is not a work of art.
Art as expression creates narratives which intersect with existing narratives either negatively or positively, the movement is dialectical. It is only by negation of existing meanings in art that new meanings can be experienced, and our notions can be expanded. Kandinsky's abstractions are not based on representations of the exterior world, they are interpretations of an interior world of feelings/values/meanings, which sets him apart from other abstract artists such as Picasso or Mondrian.
I don't think that great works of art are simply things, rather I think they pull things out of simple material existence into processes, or ways of experiencing which if you can catch their vibe separates them from other experiences.
The "goal" depends. The conscious goal of the artist? Sometime's there isn't one. The metaphysical telos of art in general? Big shoes to fill, no? I like what Berdyaev said about art, paraphrasing: "art wants to create actual being, but fails." Art has the divine creative urge, to create being itself. Laughable or controversial, maybe, but real.
Even for myself, my motives for making art depend. I will say, in leu of the Witty quote I just posted to the TPF Quote Cabinet, that the music I've made that I found to be the most personally satisfying and cathartic was the work that was the most personal and honest, as cliche as that is. The personal goal, for me, of making music is to go deeper and deeper, both into myself as I evolve (or devolve), and also into the medium that I have available to me. To explore my own being concurrently with exploring the medium, and to explore how the two interact, and how they interact with the world. All of this is a product of the world around me; the world and the life I find myself in dictate how I respond to the medium, and to what extent I can go into myself to pull a piece of myself out and transform it into something.
I can understand how art if understood as semblance fails to create actual being, that's why Plato kicked the imitative arts out of his Republic, but if an artist composes a song with lyrics and melody, a work of art, doesn't that song have actual being?
“If anyone is unwilling to descend into himself, because this is too painful, he will remain superficial in his writing...If I perform to myself, then it’s this that the style expresses. And then the style cannot be my own. If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit.”
? Ludwig Wittgenstein
Here is what Kandinsky said:
Yes "If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit." and yes, "All of this is a product of the world around me; the world and the life I find myself in dictate how I respond to the medium, and to what extent I can go into myself to pull a piece of myself out and transform it into something"
Kandinsky and Wittgenstein seem to bring ethics into the goal of art, the duty that one owes to one's art as one of its devout practitioners. So then perhaps a goal of art is to produce ethically authentic works, that further our understanding of truth because they can enable observers to experience a facet of the artist's self which is consciously or unconsciously transformed and presented in the work of art.
It's interesting to compare Hilma Klint to Kandinsky.
Kandinsky wrote a theory of his work published in 1912 "Concerning The Spiritual In Art"
Unlike most abstract artists Kandinsky did not look to nature or the universe for inspiration, he looked inside himself and gave expression to his interior feelings, emotions, what he suggests is the pure or essential pictorial plane, and he did this by means of the figurative, the external, which for him is the non-essential plane.
They may have worked alone, but no one can fully isolate themselves from society, they have to be raised by someone, go to school and learn. Yes they can become eccentric, and perhaps by in being so isolated they can see further and clearer than those who are so fully enmeshed in society that it is impossible for them to have such a point of view.
There are cultures where that's how art is understood. A Chinese watercolor painting can be clearly translated into words.
Harman's Pluto-Picasso comparison feels downright misleading:
Science explores the universe and things in it.
Art does not explore itself, that's the consumption of art (some art is surely self-exploratory, however), like science it tends to explore the universe and things in it.
Some art may be hard to paraphrase, but its meaning has finite strokes. No, study of a single Picasso does not reveal ever increasing detail because the Picasso itself is a limited study of something else.
"Science" is thought of as a larger body of work - a process -that spans many subjects, but a single work of art might amount to less than half a hypothesis. Trés gauche. The on-going creation of art does in fact reveal an ever lengthening list of (sometimes) true facts about the subject matter it captures...
If we're forced to compare art to science, it's hard to speak to its "goals" as the goals of scientific endeavors are varied (it is not merely the pursuit of knowledge). Likewise the goals of artistic endeavors are many.
What art is or does seems trappable though:
A scientific work yields descriptive and predictive power over the physical world by making rigidly defined and testable statements in procedural fashions. Artistic works can also yield descriptive and predictive power over things in the physical world, but they tend to do so without the organization, consensus, and rigidity which science demands as prerequisite.
Good science describes relationships that are hard to reduce.
Good art says things which are hard to paraphrase.
I think good art is indeed good because it "says something" that is difficult to compress or is very specific. In the case of Picasso, by distorting and removing so much, what remains is brought into greater focus.. Good art reveals, and it does so with ineffable style by using clever compositions of imprecise language.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how many words can a Picasso fetch?
In high school I had a very talented art teacher who showed us his magnum opus which was a hyper-realistic painting of an old row boat tied to a dock. It was so realistic that I could not distinguish it from a photograph. Here was a work of art completed with more organization and rigidity than most other artworks, but he was almost ashamed of it and now I can gather why: it said little to nothing of value or intrigue. It was a painting imbued with skill beyond what I can fathom, and really that was the only remarkable thing about it. It's language was too precise. A grainy black and white photograph would have stated more.
What reveals more about the world and is harder to paraphrase, a photograph of a person or Picasso's portrait of them? In describing the photo, we would have a long list of details, and in describing the Picasso we might also need to list all the details which have been intentionally warped and omitted. It's kind of paradoxical that a photograph contains more information than a painting, generally (Picasso could probably have done what he did working from photographs to begin with) but a good painting even from a photograph can mean so much more. Photos tend to contain more data, but good art simplifies to magnify, making them more interesting and meaningful.
Science is the same way though: we observe vastly mixed phenomenon and try and bring fundamental parts and relationships into focus. Science seeks to highlight by simplifying and magnifying.
A painting is generally more interesting than a photo because the painting makes commentary. The commentary of the painting might be contained in the photograph but discerning it would require the lens of the artist (additional data perhaps).
So to conclude, good art says more with less. It trims detail into a kind of negative space where it becomes ambiguous, and what remains therefore becomes the object of focus. Often times we do not have suitable language for the things artworks communicate. The beauty of life, the curves of nature, the hubris of man. Such specific and contextual (lacking better terms) concepts and experiences are sometimes most efficiently expressed through a non-verbal medium, and if a work of art efficiently communicates a perception or notion I find worthy or interesting, I'll call it good art.
But I'm reluctant to discount prose; A picture can be worth a thousand words but a well written book can be worth thousands and thousands of pictures.
Harman is expanding on the notion of difference between the scientific image and the manifest image, he breaks this down into a difference in knowledge provided by science and by philosophy, while recognizing that there are those who move between the two. Here is the full paragraph and citation for interview
I am not sure I understand here. Is it because he is imitative in the way Plato suggests in the Republic or do you mean that Picasso always founds new ways of presenting what he had previously presented.
Yes, I wanted to bring that up, I don't agree with Harman that there is a finite interpretation, in fact I would strenuously argue against any finite limit, as long as there are humans there will be arguments about what is the correct way to interpret. I think the reason why masterpieces are masterpieces is because they continue to strongly affect their observers.
Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter
The photo and the portrait are both mimetic, in a photo time is frozen as it presents a reality which as you indicate presents much more detail and more information. Yet it is still a simplified reality, since it presents a 3D object in 2D. The portrait distorts her face providing an overt commentary (to use your word) prior to any interpretation. Simplifying it as you suggest. While the figurative elements in the artwork may be simpler than the photo, the art work presents a much deeper view of the character in the portrait. It goes beyond the surface to the invisible in a way that is very difficult to replicate using a camera.
So then perhaps a goal of art is the communication of a way of understanding/experiencing by means of simplification and stylizing of its object.
Quoting Cavacava
What I mean to say is that a single painting or work of art might be analogous to a single scientific detail like "dwarf" in "dwarf planet". Comparing science to the study of a single artwork instead of the on-going body and process as a whole seemed vastly unfair in the analogy. The additional context makes it clear that its point was not to produce this effect, but I think my objection might be down to the authors somewhat loose usage of the terms art and philosophy (Do we define art/philosophy by specific products? By their processes? Their goals?). As he reassures us though, the issue is of mere taxonomy.
Quoting Cavacava
If there is a limit to variations in interpretation, it's not scientifically testable :)
Quoting Cavacava
This definition resonates very strongly with what I consider to be good art. In addition to this, art which invents complexity which is not there in the first place (instead of simplifying and focusing), the dreaded abstract art, tends to say nothing at all by obfuscating and randomly distorting until all tangible meaning is lost. Anti-art.
I see now that Harman doesn't claim that art is not paraphrasable. He merely says that art may be created that "no paraphrase ever does justice."
Quoted in my opening post and you quoted in your response to me.
The difference I tried to point out is that this inability that "no paraphrase ever does justice." is an effect and not a goal. Harman said: I didn't deny this only that I don't think it is art's goal.
You said art's goal is to "To communicate feeling/value/meaning.", and I wonder how such a goal differentiates it from other human endeavors which also attempt to communicate feeling/value/meaning?
In a word: aesthetics.
So the butcher, the baker, the cobbler, the culter, the chef...don't have an aesthetic?
Isn’t the aesthetic of an artwork something different? It serves no utility, unlike the work of the other artisans you mention, Cava.
Sorry missed the utility part...does the whole exist for the benefit of the parts or do the parts exist for the benefit of the whole, where is the utility?
I don't have an answer, necessarily, in regards to the artisan. I suppose the "whole" of a loaf of ["whole-wheat"] bread is the nutrition and sustenance. Some parts of that are the flavor and texture, and the aesthetic of what the loaf looks like. Is it a cheap mass-produced loaf from the supermarket? Is it a fancy, expensive artisan loaf with perfect little crevices and colors? Was it an imperfectly shaped loaf made at home by someone who loves you? These are all aesthetic considerations of the loaf. Is that what you're getting at? If so, I'd say the parts serve the whole, when it comes to the utilitarian artisan. The parts still have value in themselves, though.
But it's not clear to me when it comes to a painting, or a piece of music. What is the "whole" here? I don't know. The artwork doesn't have a clear utility (nutrition). Nutrition of the spirit, maybe? An attempt to create "actual being" that fails?
By the way, I don't think I responded to your response to me, sorry. I'm too lazy to drag up the Berdyaev quote, but my understanding is that by actual being (that was a paraphrase), he meant Being, capital B, in a philosophical sense. I interpret it as the creative urge as a literal urge to create Being in the way the divine ("God") created being (thats the worldview Berdyaev is working from). And that urge is always a failure. I should drag up the quote because it's hard to wrangle with.
Edit: I'm currently searching through my unorganized stacks of books which are in front of my organized bookshelf for the Berdyaev text...
What you want to say and how you want to say it.
I agree that "the parts serve the whole", that the parts are the means to an end, that their utility is only realized by the whole or end. In a similar way, water, yeast and flour are essential parts for making a loaf of bread. These parts at the immanent level of composition are purposeful. These parts, again similar to a loaf of bread, are transformed in the process of composition into a whole which is categorically different from the parts.
At the level of the whole, a loaf of bread sustains life, utility at this level is different from the composition utility that made it, yet it retains some of the essential characteristics of what and how it was made (almost like a dialectic). A work of art does not have the same kind of utility as a loaf of bread. We can compare loaves of bread for texture, moistness, aroma, flavor and so on, as well as how or if it sustains our body. A work of art also can be described in the terms of color, hue, saturation, or cadence, pitch, meter...but in the case of art what is sustained, broadened, or enhanced is our spirit..."Nutrition of the spirit"
The oldest works of art are estimated at around 40000 years old preserved in caves in various parts of the world. The most famous are at Lascaux in France, but they are also in Indonesia. Many of these paintings are fabulously stylized. I especially like the hand stencils that appear in these caves.
It is almost like they are waving at us, 'we were here'.
So, yes art is a medium of expression and expression is an essential characteristic of man from the get go. Understanding this "vague" term is the challenge. That challenge goes beyond, painting, music, sculpture...into our virtual world, where new concepts (or transformation of existing concepts) of what comprise art art are emerging.
They may or may not. Art is just a concept, and as such it can be applied to practically anything. Framing something as art is like an invitation to view a subject in a new or aesthetic way, where we might appreciate what has been previously taken for granted, see new or renewed meaning, or perhaps generally expand our conception of a subject (as I think you mentioned).
I'd say it's going beyond the rational but practical rationality is actually rather irrational, I'm beginning to understand.
Russian "Defamiliarization" (ostranenie), German "Distancing Effect" (Verfremdungseffekt), and Derrida's "Difference" (Différance).
It takes what is real by virtue of familiarity and presents it in an unfamiliar, magnified, or distorted way, thereby causing new perceptions and perspectives to emerge in the consumer.
This may not be the precise definition covering all "art", but it's a good start toward defining "good art".
The creative energy for the art, comes from the unconscious mind of the artist. The good artist builds a bridge between his unconscious mind, and the unconscious minds of his audience. The unconscious minds of the great artists, anticipate the future, and can convey this vision to others though the art; unconscious bridge to the future.
For example, art during the industrial revolution, changed from photographic clarity, to the fuzziness of impressionist art. This change paralleled the shift in culture away from the historical farm life, based on centuries of pastoral repetition, to unprecedented factory life. The industrial revolution had an impact on human nature, making things fuzzy. The art movement anticipated this change.
Abstract art, which came next, anticipated other changes in culture, made by theory like relativity and uncertainty, where cause and affect became distorted; determinate versus indeterminate. The artists unconsciously sensed and/or anticipated the change, and helped make it conscious.
Idol worship has a connection to the unconscious art affect. The golden calf was a good work of art, that had power over some people, due to its unconscious induction affect. The ancients would project the induced feelings, as coming from the work of art; god in the art. The induced affect was inside them all the time. The art made it conscious. A new car has an art affect, in the sense it induces a feeling of importance.
One modern artist from the 1950's. who was prophetic of now was Escher. He has a work of art called Relativity. In this work of art, there are people climbing staircases at all angles. If you look at any particular staircase, the reference appears fine, by itself. However, if you look at the bigger picture, all the references cannot exist at the same time.
The trick behinds this affect is connected to creating an illusion of 3-D, using 2-D; flat paper. A 3-D illusion can exist in 2-D, but it will not exist in actual 3-D. I can draw a ball on a flat piece of paper to look 3-D. But it you touch it with your finger you can feel it is flat. It can fool the eye but not touch.
Logic is based on cause and affect, which is 2-D (x,y). Logic can create spatial illusions which look 3-D to the eye, but which do not exist in 3-D. One such affect is connected to special relativity. Einstein defined three parameters in special relativity; relativistic distance, time and mass. However, most of physics only uses space-time and ignores relativistic mass. This downgrade from 3-D to 2-D, allows 3-D illusions in 2-D. If you include mass; energy balance, the illusions are easier to see.
If it is so, why does art play that role? Why is art the way it is?
The golden calf affect; god in the art, can induce unconscious projection, so one feels better if surrounded by the god in the clothes. The tribal hunter will wear the skin of his prey, to acquire the spirit of the animal; golden calf affect. The skin is not a god, but a trigger to what is inside of us.
The reason this affects works is the unconscious mind is the original instinctive mind. Modern humans have become unnatural due to willpower and choice. There is a sense or need to return to its roots. Art brings us there, while culture swings the pendulum the other way. Fashion needs to reboot constantly to trigger the feelings since they are temporary.
Some art brings the individual back to their roots for a short time, while other art brings the herd back, or warns the herd that there are hazards to instinct, ahead.
Shoes are a common female art induction. Shoes fit on the feet, which touch the earth. Shoes are connected to natural instinct; of the earth. The problem is the golden calf induction is not permanent, but needs to be rebooted constantly; new shoes, since culture pulls women the other way, away from natural instinct. The shoe girl is often the cultural girl, not the natural girl. She has more unconscious potential for the trigger.
Clothing styles are ornamental, they are not fine art. The aesthetic effect of fine art arises from its being and not from any purpose or instrumentality or any other interest that cause "the best buzz".
I don't think art is mainly about objective truths, I think it's more about transcendent subjective truths.
Ask the question in french and it's obvious they are more alike than different from each other.
artiste ou artisan? (artist or craftsman?)
Here is the full quote from the OP
If by transcendent subject truths you mean " Truth that is, ultimately, beyond human comprehension and before all concepts. It is beyond reality, and is the Creator of realities, existence, time and all there is, was and is yet to be." Wikipedia, The only sort of experience that approaches this conception is that of the Sublime, as that which is beyond comprehension and I doubt such experience can be classified as true or false, it can be experienced but it can't be conceptualized.
This is also taken out of context. I am not sure what your point is? Yes, they are similar that is what I stated, but fine art is not instrumental based on utility like the crafts.
Ar you entertained by your thoughts and feelings? If not, why not?
Art originally started as bored bourgeoisie who had nothing better to do all day than sit and stare. Filled with feminine energies they took their ideas to canvas, to express their feminine souls. Over time this became old hat, painting lost it's charm and novelty, and people were no longer amazed by the works. So it turned into a cash-grab contest to convince as many suckers as possible that their art was amazing, revolutionary, and profound. Cash in on other's narcissism, make them feel like they are special, unique, that only they are capable of such grandiose levels of pretentiousness, that is so elite they cannot put into words, only they can understand the divine, ethereal beauty of a Campbell's can of soup. and History will write you as one of the profound eccentrics, one of the greats.
If a great work of art is a constant source of new, deeper meanings, aren't the love songs about how the singer loved a woman/man good art?
The phenomena of discovering deeper meanings begins in the subject that's experiencing art. If one hasn't the interest to interpret a work of art, nothing new will come. And if the subject is willing to find new relations and interpretations in a work of art, he/she can decompose the chorus of "Gucci Gang" and have something frutiferous.
For me, if the aesthetics study's goal is to find objective hints of the existence of a property called "beauty", I'd take as principle remainder the fact that each person reacts to something differently.
It's then clear that aesthetical experience consists of a piece of work and a subject (a piece of work isn't art itself), and that is related to the subject's reaction.
And, if each subject reacts to a work of art differently, the good art explores this concept (this is why Duchamp's "Fountain" is so powerful; it produced the most different reactions. And this is why the silly love songs of the 80's are also so powerful; and they were played, everyone was sure what to do: to dance together with a partner). It is important to remember that my interpretation of good art is directly connected to the social context in which the piece of art is being experienced. And this is another attribute which good art explores: good art can cause the most different reactions or the most certain reaction for a longer period of time.
Maybe this is just another way of saying what you tried to say, but I'm using words less related to the piece and more related to the subject.
Cheers
(Very well formalized thesis, by the way)
An important side-effect is the cleansing of the doors of perception (you look at things afresh when "coming up for air" after being absorbed in a great work).
I would say also that art shouldn't be too much divorced from craft, and that some 20th century art took a bit of a wrong turn when it tried to do that. Over-intellectualized art is another blind alley, as is pure conceptualism.
Also, while art is in part a dialogue between artists down the generations, if it gets too introverted and self-referential and you need a secret decoder ring to "get" it, then again, it's drifted too far from the main point.
The question of whether you need a "guidebook" and knowledge of context (personal and social) is variable - whether it'll be worthwhile making the effort to know the context around the art depends on the quality of the artist, whether you're rewarded by making that effort or not.
So what happens to a religious in-humanist when they visit a gallery?
In my opinion, that sums it up rather well. What makes art, art, in my view, is the fact that it expresses something which otherwise would have been related to, or even outside of, personal experience. In other words, it defines the ineffable and ephemeral, encapsulates them such that it cannot be paraphrased, or broken down further. And allows this to be shared.
Kinda like, how music is so inextricably tied to emotion, and how many people have songs that define them, or at least particular emotions they experience. Hence the fact that we have theme songs for characters, mood songs... How people have happy songs, sad songs... Etc.
As to whether or not such is the Goal of art, or the result of it... Is the Goal of a hammer to pound in a nail? Or is that merely the result? I don't think there's a right or wrong answer here, as it primarily depends upon our experience, which is subject to change and variation. Though if you ask Hegel... :P
Their head explodes.
Rather, in accordance with your claim that art provides an "religious jag," whatever art is congruent with their religious views would have the greatest potential to "induce an arrest in normal everyday consciousness" (what you claim is the goal or function of art) and whatever art was incongruent with their system of beliefs and meaning would likely fail to induce such an arrest in normal consciousness. Right?
You're tangling this idea you have about the goal of art being an arrest in normal consciousness with a system of meaning (religion) and it doesn't make sense. Can you explain?
I don't think it's that cut and dried. After all, secular humanists can enjoy the older, religious works of art, and religious people can enjoy some modernist art too. In that way, the function of art as providing an arrest in normal everyday consciousness transcends questions of meaning in that social sense (re. roles, etc.)
But to be really clear, then perhaps i should stick to "mystical" instead of religious (taking "mysticism" in the sense of certain types of experiences that are common across most human beings, because of neurological similarities - deep or transcendent feelings of awe, wonder, ego-loss, etc.). I do believe that mysticism is more at the root of religion than the kind of "social glue" factors that rationalists usually canvass, though they are important too.
Of course it's not. I was attempting to illustrate the absurdity of your idea.
Quoting gurugeorge
How generously and open-minded of you to think so. :roll:
Quoting gurugeorge
I suppose it hasn't occurred to you that you're simply wrong about the function of art and therefore don't need to try making a square fit a round hole by claiming it transcends shape.
Quoting gurugeorge
If you knew what you were talking about you wouldn't have mentioned religious to begin with.
Quoting gurugeorge
Even if this was saying much of anything, you haven't made a case for equating aesthetics and mysticism. They may be similar brain states but it's our cultural and individual conditioning that determines how we interpret these experiences. Atheists or "secular people" don't visit art galleries for spiritual awakening.
You're a guru of ignorance, george. Crawl back to whatever hillbilly barstool you staggered away from. Maybe you'll find a disciple or two there.
Seems glib, but it's the only correct answer in my view: depends on the artist. Different artists have different goals, sometimes different goals for each work, or even different multiple goals for each work.
Any statement of the form "The goal of art is x," where x is some single or small list of things, is going to be way off-base re what's actually going on when people create artworks.
Nice post. I thought I'd point out that your definition of great art almost implies your conclusion. Or at least it's natural to me that if we think that great art exerts a power that is not diminished over time, then this timelessness must have some relation to what is timeless in the reality that we don't call art. For what it's worth, I think you are largely right.
But must we reserve 'great' only for timeless works of art? What if a work of art is exceedingly potent in its moment and yet somehow fails to move others the same way a century later? If this sounds unlikely to us, then maybe we are assuming that the 'highest' aspects of human existence are independent of time. I personally find this more than plausible. But I thought it would be nice to bring this theme to the surface.
I like this. Along these lines, I think the great artist helps us 'tune in' to something that is already there in ourselves, though not lit up as brightly as it could be and as it was in the artist while creating the art.
Well said, so maybe the best approach is to think in terms of shared potential for subjective (feeling-based) transcendence. It's conceivable that some varieties of 'personal' transcendence are less shared than others, and that art based on this might be less popular and yet no less effective for the smaller group sensitive to it. The art deemed central could then be something like a measure of what kind of 'subjective transcendence' was most common at a given time. We can even perhaps feel our way into the spirit of a time (or thinking we have) by responding to various art works passionately.
For me it's especially about pictures of human beings (in the visual realm, anyway, which seems to be the focus here.) In this case, a picture can be worth ten thousand words, I think.
I agree, at least technically. But I think there is an implicit focus on what some might call the highest or deepest kind of art. Obviously what this is is up for debate, but I think what people have in mind is art that has a 'spiritual' resonance (is deeply moving.)
Well said.
I don't at all agree with distinctions like that, though.
I can respect that, but I'm surprised. Doesn't some some art stand out as not just clever, not just skillful, not just pleasant?
There are a few possibilities:
Art for aesthetic pleasure.
Art to communicate some idea or concept, enhanced aesthetically.
Art to communicate a religious concept, enhanced aesthetically.
Art to induce a ‘spiritual experience’.
The thing is that, depending on the individual and their particular state of mind when experiencing an art form, a person may experience any, all, or none of the above. There isn’t really anything mysterious about it.
That would just be about different individuals having different reactions to, different ideas about, both the same and different works. For any particular work, one person might say, "This is just pleasant" and another might say, "This is more than (or something else aesthetically worthwhile rather than) just being pleasant." These reactions tell us about the observer, how they think about the work in question.
Sure, or, in other words, how the work exists for them, because the response is surely not only or even primarily thought.
The response is only thought insofar as we're talking about things like "this is pleasurable"/"this is more than pleasurable" etc.
I suppose you're otherwise referring to non-mental physiological responses they might have, or actions they make take--like if it's a painting and they walk to view it at a different angle, etc.?
Well for me a simple continuum of pleasure doesn't get it right. What I have in mind are different kinds of feelings that we experience as we also experience the work sensually -- along with thoughts. We can reasonably say that the work is there to provide pleasure, but IMO only if we allow for some complex pleasures that don't only vary quantitatively.
I was just addressing what was brought up, though, and it was brought up by you. You had said, "Doesn't some some art stand out as not just clever, not just skillful, not just pleasant?"
"Clever, skillful and pleasant" are all mental judgments we make. "This is not just clever" and so on would also be mental judgments we make, and they're nothing more than that.
Well, sure. But then 'They're nothing more than that' is also nothing more than that, and merely one more mental judgement we make. The idea that only some kind of stuff 'out there' is 'really' real is, on its own terms, a mere 'illusion' or 'projection.'
To be clear, I know very well where you are coming from. If I put my amateur physicist hat on, then sure that method treats some kind of mind-independent nature (that doesn't care about us or have preferences) as fundamental. This seems to be something like educated common sense, though admittedly plenty of people do indeed add God to the equation.
But I'd say that most atheists and agnostics think of nature as a blind machine. They will grant that (from within one perspective among many possible and useful) we 'project' value on what is essentially or 'really' dead and meaningless necessity. I'm at peace with this view, but I don't think it's very important to argue over the details. The important thing is whether one grasps existence as situated within such a dead machine or within a world organized by some trans-human intelligence. I think and act as if we are alone down here, and from that perspective I am concerned with what can be made of existence. Where can art take me? To what degree is even traditional religious thought 'true' 'subjectively and intended 'subjectively' in the first place? It seems to me that sometimes individuals with a particular epistemology or ontological ax to grind project that kind of concern onto discussions where that's not really the central thread or intention. The hammer sees only nails. To what degree does method constrain what appears in the first place?
Actually, it is more than that, because it's a non-mental fact that "This is pleasant" is just a mental phenomenon.
I understand where you are coming from, but I still think there are problems with that approach. It sounds something like a correspondence understanding of truth. But then we end up with problems: if it is the truth that truth is correspondence, then to what does the correspondence theory correspond? Surely not to some Platonic entity called truth which is out there among the atoms-and-void. IMO, I think our sense of objectivity and the shared world is less explicit than that and perhaps evades formalization.
No, I said it's a non-mental fact. That's different than saying it's true. Facts and truths are not the same thing.
Facts are states of affairs in the world. Ways that the world is, in other words.
Truth is a property of propositions, namely, a semantic judgment about the relationship between a proposition and something else.
OK. Could you explain that? (Sketch the relevant difference.)
Just added an explanation above.
OK, thanks. But I still think there is some difficulty here. A fact exists for us, it seems, as a state of mind. Would you say that a fact exists for us as a truth? As a proposition that corresponds to the way of the world?
"Exists for us" you mean re how you know about it? If so, sure, but it's important not to conflate epistemology and ontology. Facts do not need us to exist in order to be facts.
I roughly agree that facts don't need us in order to be facts. I believe that there is a world with particular ways that will continue after all of us talkers are gone. I have just tended to find that any attempt to formulate or make explicit objectivity tends to run into specific difficulties, usually because the theory itself gets entangled in its own assertions. That said, I think I agree with you on the larger vision. I'd just say that once god is dead that the rest is just details that are no longer terribly important. Of course that's preference. I'd just prefer moving on to more existential questions, having accepted something like a mind-independent nature that doesn't care about me 'in' which I have my meaningful 'illusions' or mental states. Since we live and die for these mental states, calling them 'only' mental states mostly has value as an antidote to dogmatism.
I would define art as anything made to look attractive to its viewer and to command a lot of money in trade.
What about art that's grotesque, disturbing, repulsive, harsh, etc.?
Sometimes we use "attractive" in a broader sense, so that with art, we're talking about whether we're "aesthetically attracted" to it, rather than being finding it attractive a la thinking it's pretty, beautiful, etc. "Aesthetically attractive" is another way of simply saying that we feel it has aesthetic value, even though on the pretty/beautiful/etc. level we find it repulsive (or whatever) instead.
If we try to parse art as being just about beauty, etc., we get into a pickle when we try to understand why people enjoy horror fiction, visual art grotesques, musical genres like noise, etc.
So no concern with talking about art from a broader sociological perspective?
On a side note, I have some of the great art masterpieces, the mona lisa, the last supper, the storm of galilee, the madonna - they're mostly religious. Anyway, they are all printed using modern technology. To some, that lessens their beauty because they lack the original artiste's idiosyncrasies and it may be true but they're still just as beautiful.
I'd say that in order to recognize anything, one needs to have at least some familiarity with the subject to be recognized. For instance in order to appreciate mathematical differential equasions, one first needs to learn what mathematical differencials are. I'd say the same goes for art, wich could be about any subject; In order to recognize the value of the subject portrayed by the art form, one needs to be familiar enough with the subject to be able to recognize it. Subjects that are not recognized don't get any appreciation. Hence very well perfomed art containing less known subjects don't get as much appreciation as lesser performed art on more commenly known subjects.
I'd like to add that when I said subjective I didn't mean to reduce the concept to just feeling-based. I intended to make it also include logically deduced possibilities from an inconclusive data set. Feeling-based is one way but I didn't intend to exclude other ways to approach the same phenomenon.
In the case of objectivity in art, however, it's the general consensus that any claim of objectivity is simply off the table. Has anyone else noticed this inconsistency? Or am I, perhaps, missing something?
I don't understand what you're saying there.
With regards to the goal of art we must look at particular and at universal here. So a single work of art can have a very specific goal in mind, it can be made for profit, or for display, or whatever the goal that the artist states it is.
Now in universal terms it is much broader, but singularly not alien to our phenomenological receipt of it. For instance one may argue that a goal of medicine is to heal broken bodies in particular, but in universal terms that may mean to change human nature by extending life beyond its natural boundaries. Therefore, in particular art is to be looked at, but in universal terms art is to be seen in a manner that escapes particular approach. Thus looking at Statue of David particularly, is a vista of human creativity in universal terms... That creativity we expirience as extraordinary and we ( not all of us as I am not a fan of modern art ) expirience as art.
Needless to say, various iterations of blue or red squares in my mind never move ones mind beyond the particular. Thus making it am common place expirience of blue colour.
The question is the goal of art. But to answer that question, even in part, you need to address it through eras.
What was the goal, the objective, of the cave drawings of Lascaux? I don’t think we could even come close to understanding that; our modern minds trying to comprehend the mind of someone who lived approximately 30,000 BC.
We can begin to understand the goal of Michelangelo: he had to produce a commission for the Vatican.
We can understand the goal of Velasquez: he was employed by the Spanish King Philip IV.
We understand the economics and transactions. We we still don’t understand the artist. And we don’t understand him any more than the individual sitting next to us on the train. But because they produce a piece of art we feel that there is something revealed about them. That’s our position in relation to the artist. But if the goal is not financial, or aclaim (which is ultimately financial), or fame (ditto), then what’s left? What could their goal be?
Who said there was another goal that you could take part in? Who said the art had anything to do with you and your thoughts? Who raised that question?
Your argument claims that great works of art exert power that has not diminished over time and that they hold objective truths that cannot be avoided because they generate new or deeper thoughts. I wonder if this is always the case for “great art”. Can bad art or just not “great” art still have power that doesn't diminish over time? Can bad art hold objective truths that when you revisit works of art they still generate new and deeper thoughts?
I object to this definition of “great art”. Do not all works of art exert some sort of power that hold object truths? Even a simple finger painting of a tree done by a child holds power, objective truths and meaning that generates thought. This art is not necessarily “great”, not in the sense of a Picasso painting or a Shakespeare play, but it still exerts some power and objective truths that cannot be avoided. When I take a trip down memory lane and revisit finger paintings ive done as a child, these works of art still have the same power they had when they were first created and they also generate new thoughts and or deeper thoughts then when I last visited these works. Even though these works of art are not great they still fit in your definition of “great art”.
If bad art can contain all of these definitions of “great art” couldn't we then claim that a simple drawing of a circle contains all the definitions of great art as well? From this then, we could also claim that a perfect circle does not exist and therefore paraphrasing the drawing of a circle by saying a shape in which all points are equidistant from a fixed center is a fully paraphrased work of art. I think it follows that great art can be paraphrased, certain abstract pieces in museums of simple (approximated) circles are considered great art however it can be fully paraphrased. One can fully paraphrase great art because great art is subjective.
If bad art fits in your definition of great art and you can fully paraphrase bad art, ie example of the drawing of a circle then you can also paraphrase great works of art because great works of art are all subjective.
Or if you believe god is hands-off like deists believe, then the illusiory goal from the previous example would actually be the real goal. Same with if there is no god at all.
Making art seems (the) way we human beings share with - not only, or necessarily, communicate to - each other how one's subjectivity feels while playing with abstract forms or malleable things or bodily orientation to/with other bodies (e.g. dance, erotica) or our environments (e.g. architecture, painting). If there's a goal I suppose it's to give some fleetingly significant form to formlessness, sense to nonsense, or order to chaos ... such that we're briefly distracted from the latter by the former; thus, art may be a tool for survival via improvising 'counterfactual worlds' for us to explore (i.e. colonize ourselves with?) and thereby learn to be more flexible/tolerant (i.e. adaptive).
addendum:
Aesthetics & Beauty