AESTHETICSPART TWO: DEFINING & JUDGING ART

DEFINING & JUDGING ART

• Defining Art

• Objective

• Approaches

• Why Defining Art Matters

• Judging Art

• Objective

• Approaches

• Why assessing Art Matters

THE ARTS & FINE ARTS

• Sean Le Rond D’Alenbert

• Part One

• Reflective Knowledge

• Direct Ideas & Imitations

• Painting, Sculpture & Architecture

• Poetry

• Music

THE ARTS & FINE ARTS

• Arts

• Differentiation of the principal parts of knowledge.

• Liberal & Mechanical Arts

• Liberal Arts

• Knowledge

• Knowledge

• First Sort of Feeling

• Second Sort of Feeling

THE PARADOX OF TASTE

• David Hume

• Language

• Variety of taste

• Language: art & science

• Morality & Language

• Example: Homer

• Example: Koran

• Precepts of ethics

THE PARADOX OF TASTE

• Standard of Taste

• Standard of taste

• Argument for the impossibility of a standard of taste.

• The nature of beauty

• The axiom

• Opposition to Axiom

THE PARADOX OF TASTE

• Rules & Criticism

• Rules of composition a posteriori not a priori

• Rules of art

• Faults

• Testing the Rules of Art

• Endurance & Foreign appeal as measures of influence

THE PARADOX OF TASTE

• Principles

• General principle

• Explanation of failures to please/displease

• Delicacy from Don Quixote

• Qualities in objects & delicacy of taste

• Critics

THE PARADOX OF TASTE

• Ascertaining Delicacy of Taste

• Intro

• Practice

• Multiple Perusals

• Comparisons

• Prejudice

• Purpose

• Reason

THE PARADOX OF TASTE

• Critics

• Principles of taste

• The True Standard

• Problem

• Aesthetics vs. the Sciences

• Distinguishing people of taste

• Time

THE PARADOX OF TASTE

• Factors

• Two sources of variation

• The general principles of taste are uniform in human nature

• Age & qualities

• Relativity

• Age & Country

• Ancient & modern learning

• Morality & aesthetics

• Moral principles

• Religion

WHAT IS ART?

• Leo Tolstoy

• Defining Beauty

• Two definitions of beauty

• No objective definition

• Taste

• Criticism of attempts to define taste

• Criticism of existing aesthetics

• Criticism of existing aesthetic standards

WHAT IS ART?

• Art, Pleasure & Beauty

• Defining human activity

• Pleasure & beauty

• Food analogy

• Food analogy continued: the problem of taking beauty to be the aim of art

• Problem with existing aesthetics: it is based on a conception of beauty

WHAT IS ART?

• Union & The Activity of Art

• Defining Art: words analogy

• What is not art

• Art & feeling

• The feelings

• All the following is art

• Art

WHAT IS ART?

• What Art is Not

• Definition of art & the activity of art

• Art is not

• Art is

• Analogy to words

• Importance of art

• The scope of art

WHAT IS ART?

• Art & Counterfeit Art

• Banishing & over acceptance

• Distinguishing art from counterfeit art

• The feeling & real art

• Infection & art

• Degree of infectiousness

• Sincerity

• Distinguishing art from counterfeit art

WHAT IS ART?

• Defining Good & Bad Art in Regards to Content

• Objectives

• Analogy to speech & quality of art

• Art & religious perception

• River analogy

• Religious perception & value

• Attack argument for religious perception

• Progress argument for religious perception

• Christian Art

• Two kinds of Christian art

WHAT IS ART?

• Assessment of Specific Works

• Examples of the highest art flowing from love of God and Man

• Examples of good universal art

• Details

• Novels

• Music

• Painting & Sculpture

• Universal Pictures & Statues

• Bad Painting

WHAT IS ART?

• Bad music & judging Beethoven

• Judging

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OSCAR WILDE

• Background (1864-1900)

• Life

• Poetry

• Plays

• Prose

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NEW AESTHETICS

• First Part

• Vivian

• Position

• Mirror

• Cyril’s Challenge to Vivian

• Nature & life imitate art

• Vivian’s Case

• Nature & Art

• Change in London’s climate is due to a school of art.

• Nature is our creation

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NEW AESTHETICS

• Looking & Seeing

• Things are because we see them.

• Looking is different from seeing.

• One does not see anything until one sees its beauty

• Example: fog

• Nature’s Imitation of Art

• Effects

• Nature

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NEW AESTHETICS• What Art Expresses

• Cyril

• Temper of its age

• Spirit of its time

• Moral & social conditions

• Vivian

• Art never expresses anything but itself

• Vanity

• Art is not symbolic of any age

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NEW AESTHETICS• Imitative Art

• Vivian

• The more imitative art is, the less it represents the spirit of the age.

• The more abstract & ideal, the more it represents the spirit of the age.

• Cyril

• The spirit of the age.

• Arts of imitation reveal the spirit of the age.

• Vivian: Middle Ages

• Imitative arts

• Middle Ages

• No great artist ever sees things as they really are.

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NEW AESTHETICS

• Vivian: Japan

• Japanese people as presented in art do not exist.

• See a Japanese effect

• Vivian: Ancient Greeks

• Greek art

• Art has never told us the truth

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NEW AESTHETICS• Vivian: Doctrines of the New Aesthetics

• First Doctrine: Art never expresses anything but itself

• To pass from the art of a time to the time itself is the great mistake all historians make.

• Second Doctrine: All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature and elevating them into ideals.

• Realism is a complete failure

• Avoid modernity

• The only beautiful things

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NEW AESTHETICS

• Third Doctrine: Life Imitates Art for more than Art imitates life.

• Fourth Doctrine: Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art.