THEORIES ON ART &BEAUTY

Plato-Aristotle-Tolstoy-

PLATO ON ARTClick icon to add picture

 

Found the arts threatening. He proposed sending the

poets and playwrights out of his ideal Republic, or at

least censoring what they wrote; and he wanted music

and painting severely censored.

The arts, he thought, are powerful shapers of

character. Thus, to train and protect ideal citizens for

an ideal society, the arts must be strictly controlled.

 

Although he approved of certain religious and moralistic

kinds of art. Again, his approach is related to his theory of

Forms.

  

 

Plato had a love-hate

relationship with the

arts.

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THE THEORY OF FORMS

 

Forms are perfect Ideals, but they are also more

real than physical objects. He called them "the

Really Real". The world of the Forms is rational

and unchanging; the world of physical appearances

is changeable and irrational, and only has reality to

the extent that it succeeds in imitating the Forms.

 

 

Plato saw the changing physical world as a

poor, decaying copy of a perfect, rational,

eternal, and changeless original.

 

  

A beautiful flower, for example, is a copy or imitation of the universal Forms "flower ness" and "beauty." The

physical flower is one step removed from reality, that is, the Forms. A picture of the flower is, therefore, two steps

removed from reality. This also meant that the artist is two steps removed from knowledge, and, indeed, Plato's

frequent criticism of the artists is that they lack genuine knowledge of what they are doing. Artistic creation, Plato

observed, seems to be rooted in a kind of inspired madness.

According to this theory, since art imitates physical

things, which in turn imitate the Forms, art is always a

copy of a copy (form), and leads us even further

from truth and toward illusion. (Which can be

dangerous)

According to this theory the artist, perhaps by divine

inspiration, makes a better copy of the True than may be

found in ordinary experience. Thus the artist is a kind of

prophet. Here are some features of the two theories:

P L ATO H A D T W O T H E O R I E S O F A R T

Poetry, drama, music, painting, dance, all stir up

our emotions. All of the arts move people

powerfully.

They can strongly influence our behaviour, and

even our character. For that reason Plato insisted

that art (especially music), along with poetry and

drama and the other arts, should be part of the

education of young citizens in his ideal republic,

but should be strictly censored to present, at first,

only the good.

1. Art is Imitation 2. Art is powerful, and therefore dangerous

PROBLEMS WITH THE IMITATION THEORY.

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With an artist like Jackson Pollack it leaves out everything; what do his drip paintings imitate? And how is the theory supposed to work for music? What does music represent? Plato spoke about music representing natural sounds, and emotions, as did Aristotle. But even if one agrees that music imitates emotions, could one build a theory of music out of this fact alone?

ARISTOTLE ON ART

Art is imitation, and that’s all right,

even good.

Art is defined by Aristotle as the

realization in external form of a true

idea, and is traced back to that natural

love of imitation which characterizes

humans, and to the pleasure which we

feel in recognizing likenesses.

Good art, is positive, constructive, and

should play an important role in social

life.

However art is not limited to

mere copying. It idealizes

nature and completes its

deficiencies: it seeks to

grasp the universal type in

the individual phenomenon

Imitation is natural to humans from

childhood, it is how children learn, and

we all learn from imitation.

Tragedy can be a form of education

that provides moral insight and fosters

emotional growth.

Tragedy is the imitation of certain

kinds of people and actions.

TOLSTOY ON ARTClick icon to add picture

Bio

Born 1828-1910

One of the immortal geniuses of European

literature.

Wrote, War and Peace& Anna Karenina

He underwent a deep religious conversion

and adopted a life of peasant simplicity

Leo Tolstoy’s What is Art? (1896) Is a

treatise concerning the nature and purpose

of art, describing how art can express

moral values

Tolstoy argues that there are two basic

means by which human beings

communicate with one another.

1) SPEECH- Men and Women

Communicate their thoughts through

speech. 

2) ART- Men and Women Communicate

their feelings through art. 

Tolstoy felt that feelings are

infectious. Example Laughter.

(Tolstoy describes art in this way)

“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has

experienced, and having evoked it in oneself,

then, by means of movements, lines, colors,

sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to

transmit that feeling that others may experience

the same feeling-this is the activity of art.”

“Art is a human activity consisting in this, that

one man consciously, by means of certain

external signs, hands on to others feelings he has

lived through, and that other people are infected

by these feelings and also experience them.”

-Tolstoy, What is Art?

The stronger the infectiousness the better the art is.

 

Tolstoy defines art in terms of its ability to communicate

concepts of morality. (Art does not produce beauty)

 

Art does not belong to any particular class of society. To

limit the subject matter of art to the experiences of a

particular class of society is to deny that art can be important

for all of society.

Good art is intelligible (understandable) and

comprehensible.

Bad art is unintelligible and incomprehensible. The more

that art restricts itself to a particular audience, the more

obscure and incomprehensible it becomes to people outside

that particular audience.

 

Tolstoy believes that art is good if it is judged to be good by

the majority of people. Indeed, he claims that a great work of

art is only great if it can be understood by everyone.

SHOW & TELL

Bring in something to tomorrows class that you consider to be beautiful.

You will explain to the class why you feel your ‘thing’ is beautiful.