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Art Appreciation
Basics
NOTES:
Money culture: symbolic reality – exists due to symbols
Rational Meaning
The Philosophy of Aesthetics asks and tries to provide definitive answers to the following questions:
- What is art?
- What makes a piece of art beautiful?
- How important are personal taste when judging the quality of art?
- What are the standards of judging art?
- Why is originality so important in art? How do we define what is original or what is creative?
Judgement
- Who decides what is art?
- Who decides what makes an artwork special or good?
Structural Meaning
The Structure of Art
The interaction starts with the interaction of the Philosopher and Art.
The Philosopher has a more general point of view; the Art Theorist makes these general
point of views into more specific point of views.
Art theorists inform the art academic (teachers)
SCSS 2QMT AY 2019-2020
Beauty - The qualities that give pleasure to the sense. Characteristic of a person, place, object or
idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning or satisfaction.
Art - The product of creative human activity in which materials are shape or selected to
convey an idea, emotion or visually interesting form.
Early Theories on Art and Beauty
Objectivism - Beauty is a matter of fact. Meaning one can be right or wrong in stating something is
beautiful, so if you find something beautiful then someone who doesn’t agree
with you is wrong.
Socrates and Plato - ^ they supported this theory. Believed that art was an imitation of nature/reality.
Selectivity - An important event in an artist’s life
Clarity - Purpose, must be intelligent and clear
Integration - Relationship to the degree of beauty present. One of the most difficult portion to interpret.
Ladder of Love - The stages in this ascent in terms of what sort of beautiful thing the lover desires and is
drawn toward. Search on what can be a proper definition of beauty.
Symposium (c.385-370 BC)- ^ is from here. Accounts from Socrates.
Plato -^ is made by him.
Diotima - An ancient Greek prophetess that told Socrates the different degrees of love and beauty.
Her ideas are the basis of Platonic love.
Ladder of Love:
1. A particular beautiful body -Simple idea of beauty. Love is a desire for something we don’t have. Aroused by the
sight of individual beauty.
2. All Beautiful Bodies - Finding similarity in beauty, sees it as a part of a set.
Platonic Doctrine - According to this, all beautiful bodies share something in common, something the lover
eventually comes to recognize.
3. Beautiful souls - The spiritual and moral beauty matters much more than physical beauty.
4. Beautiful laws and institutions - Are created by good people/ beautiful souls, conditions which foster to moral beauty.
5. Beauty of knowledge - Love turns one’s attention to all kinds of knowledge leading to philosophical
understanding. One becomes philosophical.
6. Beauty itself - This is timeless, an apparition. The very essence of beauty, subsisting of itself and by
itself in eternal oneness.
Form of the Beautiful - Described as the everlasting loveliness which neither comes or goes, which neither
flowers nor fades.
Subjectivism - We are not born with knowledge nor have an idea of beauty; we learn from experience
hence the development of the notion of what is beautiful. Personal judgement of
beauty, art is a matter of taste.
David Hume -^ this theory was supported by him, an 18th century philosopher.
Empiricism - ^this theory introduces this concept that states: all knowledge is derived from sense-experience.
The Purpose of Art (19th Century) - Art during this era focused on myths that involved death/destruction. Focuses one to
have courage and strive toward greater accomplishments.
Unhappiness - During this era, this is believed to be good for human beings.
Fredrich Nietzsche - He believed that the purpose of art was metaphysical. He fell in love with a horse and
was confined in a mental hospital. Theories were closely related to Hitler
believing there is a superior race.
Übermensch - The ideal superior man of the future who could rise above conventional Christian
morality to create and impose his own values, originally described by Nietzsche
Aesthetic theories provide different answers to these questions
1. What makes something a work of art?
2. What do we learn from it?
3. What value does this work have?
Artworks
Flowers – Andy Warhol,
1964
Original source material,
Flowers series by Andy
The Thinker -Auguste Warhol, 1964. Two-sided
Rodin ,1904 collage; adapted from
Modern Photography
Under Rational definition of magazine, June 1964,
Aesthetics photographic spread of color
transparencies by Patricia
Caulfield. © AWF
Under originality