The Style of a Work of Art Can Best Be Defined as
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Question of the Month
What is Art? and/or What is Beauty?
The following answers to this aesthetic question each win a random book.
Art is something we do, a verb. Fine art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, but it is even more than personal than that: information technology's about sharing the mode nosotros feel the world, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the communication of intimate concepts that cannot be faithfully portrayed by words lonely. And because words alone are not enough, we must notice some other vehicle to acquit our intent. But the content that we instill on or in our chosen media is not in itself the fine art. Fine art is to exist institute in how the media is used, the mode in which the content is expressed.
What and so is beauty? Dazzler is much more than corrective: it is not about prettiness. In that location are plenty of pretty pictures bachelor at the neighborhood habitation furnishing store; but these nosotros might not refer to every bit cute; and information technology is not difficult to find works of artistic expression that we might agree are beautiful that are not necessarily pretty. Beauty is rather a measure out of touch on, a mensurate of emotion. In the context of art, beauty is the gauge of successful communication between participants – the conveyance of a concept between the artist and the perceiver. Beautiful fine art is successful in portraying the artist'due south well-nigh profound intended emotions, the desired concepts, whether they be pretty and brilliant, or dark and sinister. Only neither the artist nor the observer can be certain of successful communication in the end. So beauty in fine art is eternally subjective.
Wm. Joseph Nieters, Lake Ozark, Missouri
Works of fine art may arm-twist a sense of wonder or cynicism, hope or despair, adoration or spite; the piece of work of art may be direct or complex, subtle or explicit, intelligible or obscure; and the subjects and approaches to the creation of art are bounded but past the imagination of the artist. Consequently, I believe that defining art based upon its content is a doomed enterprise.
At present 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 isle, you lot've reached your destination. Similarly, the aesthetic attitude requires you to treat artistic experience as an finish-in-itself: art asks usa to arrive empty of preconceptions and attend to the fashion in which nosotros experience the work of fine art. And although a person tin accept an 'aesthetic experience' of a natural scene, flavor or texture, fine art is different in that it is produced. Therefore, art is the intentional advice of an experience as an terminate-in-itself. The content of that experience in its cultural context may decide whether the artwork is popular or ridiculed, meaning or petty, only it is art either manner.
I of the initial reactions to this approach may be that information technology seems overly wide. An older brother who sneaks up backside his younger sibling and shouts "Booo!" can exist said to be creating art. Simply isn't the deviation betwixt this and a Freddy Krueger film just one of degree? On the other hand, my definition would exclude graphics used in advertising or political propaganda, as they are created as a ways to an cease and non for their own sakes. Furthermore, 'communication' is not the best give-and-take for what I take in listen because it implies an unwarranted intention about the content represented. Aesthetic responses are often underdetermined by the artist's intentions.
Mike Mallory, Everett, WA
The fundamental departure between fine art and beauty is that art is nigh who has produced information technology, whereas beauty depends on who's looking.
Of class there are standards of beauty – that which is seen as 'traditionally' beautiful. The game changers – the foursquare pegs, so to speak – are those who saw traditional standards of beauty and decided specifically to go confronting them, perhaps just to show a point. Take Picasso, Munch, Schoenberg, to name just iii. They have made a stand against these norms in their art. Otherwise their art is similar all other fine 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 different view of the world, whether it be inspired past the piece of work of other people or something invented that's entirely new. Dazzler is any aspect of that or anything else that makes an individual feel positive or grateful. Dazzler lonely is not art, but art can be fabricated of, nearly or for beautiful things. Beauty tin be plant in a snowy mountain scene: art is the photograph of it shown to family, the oil estimation of it hung in a gallery, or the music score recreating the scene in crotchets and quavers.
Yet, art is not necessarily positive: it can be deliberately hurtful or displeasing: it can make you think almost or consider things that you would rather not. But if information technology evokes an emotion in you, then it is art.
Chiara Leonardi, Reading, Berks
Art is a mode of grasping the world. Not merely the physical world, which is what scientific discipline attempts to do; but the whole world, and specifically, the human being globe, the globe of society and spiritual experience.
Art emerged around 50,000 years ago, long before cities and civilisation, yet in forms to which we tin still direct relate. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves, which so startled Picasso, have been carbon-dated at around 17,000 years former. Now, post-obit the invention of photography and the devastating attack fabricated by Duchamp on the self-appointed Art Establishment [encounter Brief Lives this issue], art cannot be simply defined on the basis of physical tests like 'fidelity of representation' or vague abstract concepts like 'dazzler'. Then how tin nosotros define art in terms applying to both cave-dwellers and mod city sophisticates? To practise this we demand to enquire: What does fine art do? And the answer is surely that information technology provokes an emotional, rather than a simply cognitive response. One way of approaching the problem of defining fine art, then, could be to say: Fine art consists of shareable ideas that have a shareable emotional impact. Art demand not produce beautiful objects or events, since a great slice of art could validly agitate emotions other than those aroused by dazzler, such equally terror, anxiety, or laughter. Yet to derive an adequate philosophical theory of art from this understanding means tackling the concept of 'emotion' head on, and philosophers accept been notoriously reluctant to do this. Simply not all of them: Robert Solomon's book The Passions (1993) has made an fantabulous start, and this seems to me to be the mode to go.
It won't be piece of cake. Poor old Richard Rorty was jumped on from a very neat height when all he said was that literature, poetry, patriotism, love and stuff like that were philosophically of import. Fine art is vitally of import to maintaining broad standards in civilisation. Its pedigree long predates philosophy, which is only 3,000 years old, and science, which is a mere 500 years old. Fine art deserves much more attention from philosophers.
Alistair MacFarlane, Gwynedd
Some years ago I went looking for fine art. To begin my journey I went to an fine art gallery. At that stage art to me was any I found in an art gallery. I found paintings, generally, and because they were in the gallery I recognised them as art. A item Rothko painting was one colour and large. I observed a further slice that did not take an obvious characterization. Information technology was also of one colour – white – and gigantically large, occupying one complete wall of the very loftier and spacious room and standing on minor roller wheels. On closer inspection I saw that it was a moveable wall, not a piece of art. Why could ane piece of work be considered 'art' and the other non?
The answer to the question could, mayhap, exist found in the criteria of Berys Gaut to decide if some artefact is, indeed, art – that art pieces function only as pieces of art, just equally their creators intended.
But were they cute? 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 see a piece of work of art, be it painting, sculpture, book or operation. Of class, that expectation quickly changes as one widens the range of installations encountered. The classic instance is Duchamp's Fountain (1917), a rather un-beautiful urinal.
Can we ascertain beauty? Let me try by suggesting that beauty is the capacity of an artefact to evoke a pleasurable emotional response. This might exist categorised as the 'like' response.
I definitely did non like Fountain at the initial level of appreciation. There was skill, of grade, in its construction. Only what was the skill in its presentation every bit art?
Then I began to accomplish a definition of art. A work of fine art is that which asks a question which a non-art object such every bit a wall does not: What am I? What am I communicating? The responses, both of the creator artist and of the recipient audience, vary, but they invariably involve a sentence, a response to the invitation to respond. 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 brand meaning beyond language. Art consists in the making of meaning through intelligent agency, eliciting an artful response. It's a means of communication where language is non sufficient to explain or describe its content. Fine art can return visible and known what was previously unspoken. Because what fine art expresses and evokes is in office ineffable, we find it difficult to ascertain and delineate information technology. It is known through the experience of the audience likewise equally the intention and expression of the artist. The meaning is made by all the participants, and then can never be fully known. It is multifarious and on-going. Fifty-fifty a disagreement is a tension which is itself an expression of something.
Fine art drives the evolution of a culture, both supporting the establishment and likewise preventing destructive messages from being silenced – art leads, mirrors and reveals change in politics and morality. Art plays a central part in the cosmos of culture, and is an outpouring of thought and ideas from it, and so it cannot be fully understood in isolation from its context. Paradoxically, however, art can communicate beyond linguistic communication and time, highly-seasoned to our mutual humanity and linking disparate communities. Perchance if wider audiences engaged with a greater multifariousness of the world's artistic traditions information technology could engender increased tolerance and mutual respect.
Another inescapable facet of fine art is that it is a commodity. This fact feeds the creative process, whether motivating the creative person to form an detail of budgetary value, or to avert creating one, or to artistically commodify the aesthetic feel. The commodification of art likewise affects who is considered qualified to create fine art, comment on it, and even define it, as those who do good most strive to proceed the value of 'art objects' high. These influences must feed into a culture's understanding of what art is at any time, making thoughts virtually art culturally dependent. Notwithstanding, this commodification and the consequent closely-guarded role of the art critic as well gives rise to a counter culture within art culture, often expressed through the cosmos of fine art that cannot be sold. The stratification of art by value and the resultant tension too adds to its meaning, and the meaning of fine art to society.
Catherine Bosley, Monk Soham, Suffolk
First of all we must recognize the obvious. 'Art' is a word, and words and concepts are organic and change their meaning through time. Then in the olden days, art meant craft. It was something y'all could excel at through practise and difficult work. You learnt how to paint or sculpt, and you 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 substantially equally 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 stand for? Could you paint movement (Cubism, Futurism)? Could you paint the non-material (Abstract Expressionism)? Fundamentally: could anything be regarded as art? A manner of trying to solve this trouble was to look beyond the work itself, and focus on the fine art world: art was that which the institution of art – artists, critics, art historians, etc – was prepared to regard as art, and which was made public through the establishment, e.chiliad. galleries. That'southward Institutionalism – made famous through Marcel Duchamp'due south prepare-mades.
Institutionalism has been the prevailing notion through the later part of the twentieth century, at least in academia, and I would say it even so holds a firm grip on our conceptions. One case is the Swedish artist Anna Odell. Her film sequence Unknown adult female 2009-349701, for which she faked psychosis to be admitted to a psychiatric infirmary, was widely debated, and past many was not regarded equally art. But because it was debated past the art earth, it succeeded in breaking into the art globe, and is today regarded equally art, and Odell is regarded an creative person.
Of form there are those who try and break out of this hegemony, for case past refusing to play by the art earth'southward unwritten rules. Andy Warhol with his Manufactory was one, even though he is today totally embraced by the art earth. Some other example is Damien Hirst, who, much like Warhol, pays people to create the physical manifestations of his ideas. He doesn't utilise galleries and other fine art world-canonical arenas to advertise, and instead sells his objects directly to individual individuals. This liberal approach to commercialism is one way of attacking the hegemony of the art globe.
What does all this teach us almost fine art? Probably that art is a fleeting and chimeric concept. We will ever accept art, but for the virtually part we will merely really learn in retrospect what the fine art of our era was.
Tommy Törnsten, Linköping, Sweden
Art periods such every bit Classical, Byzantine, neo-Classical, Romantic, Modern and post-Modern reflect the changing nature of art in social and cultural contexts; and shifting values are axiomatic in varying content, forms and styles. These changes are encompassed, more than 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 exist are 'material counterparts' or 'mere real things' rather than artworks. Notwithstanding the competing theories, works of art can be seen to possess 'family unit resemblances' or 'strands of resemblance' linking very different instances equally fine art. Identifying instances of art is relatively straightforward, but a definition of art that includes all possible cases is elusive. Consequently, art has been claimed to be an 'open' concept.
According to Raymond Williams' Keywords (1976), capitalised 'Fine art' appears in general use in the nineteenth century, with 'Fine Fine art'; whereas 'art' has a history of previous applications, such as in music, poetry, comedy, tragedy and trip the light fantastic; and we should likewise mention literature, media arts, even gardening, which for David Cooper in A Philosophy of Gardens (2006) can provide "epiphanies of co-dependence". Art, and then, is perhaps "annihilation presented for our aesthetic contemplation" – a phrase coined by John Davies, former tutor at the School of Art Education, Birmingham, in 1971 – although 'anything' may seem too inclusive. Gaining our aesthetic involvement is at to the lowest degree a necessary requirement of art. Sufficiency for something to be art requires significance to art appreciators which endures every bit long every bit tokens or types of the artwork persist. Paradoxically, such significance is sometimes attributed to objects neither intended as art, nor especially intended to exist perceived aesthetically – for example, votive, devotional, commemorative or utilitarian artefacts. Furthermore, aesthetic interests can exist eclipsed by dubious investment practices and social kudos. When combined with glory and harmful forms of narcissism, they can egregiously affect creative authenticity. These interests can be overriding, and spawn products masquerading every bit art. And so it's up to discerning observers to spot any Fads, Fakes and Fantasies (Sjoerd Hannema, 1970).
Colin Brookes, Loughborough, Leicestershire
For me art is zilch more and nothing less than the artistic ability of individuals to limited their understanding of some attribute of private or public life, similar dearest, conflict, fear, or pain. As I read a war verse form past Edward Thomas, enjoy a Mozart piano concerto, or contemplate a M.C. Escher drawing, I am often emotionally inspired by the moment and intellectually stimulated by the idea-procedure that follows. At this moment of discovery I humbly realize my views may be those shared by thousands, fifty-fifty millions across the earth. This is due in large part to the mass media's power to control and exploit our emotions. The commercial success of a operation or production becomes the metric by which fine art is at present nearly exclusively gauged: quality in art has been sadly reduced to equating great art with sale of books, number of views, or the downloading of recordings. Also bad if personal sensibilities well-nigh a particular piece of fine art are lost in the greater rush for immediate credence.
So where does that get out the subjective notion that beauty can yet be found in art? If beauty is the outcome of a process by which art gives pleasance to our senses, and then it should remain a affair of personal discernment, even if outside forces clamour to take control of it. In other words, nobody, including the art critic, should be able to tell the individual what is cute and what is not. The world of art is one of a constant tension betwixt preserving individual tastes and promoting pop acceptance.
Ian Malcomson, Victoria, British Columbia
What nosotros perceive every bit beautiful does not offend us on any level. It is a personal judgement, a subjective opinion. A retentivity from one time we gazed upon something beautiful, a sight e'er so pleasing to the senses or to the eye, ofttimes time stays with united states of america forever. I shall never forget walking into Balzac'due south house in France: the scent of lilies was and then overwhelming that I had a numinous moment. The intensity of the emotion evoked may not exist possible to explain. I don't experience it's of import to contend why I think a flower, painting, dusk or how the light streaming through a stained-glass window is cute. The power of the sights create an emotional reaction in me. I don't await or business organisation myself that others will agree with me or non. Can all agree that an act of kindness is beautiful?
A thing of beauty is a whole; elements coming together making it and so. A single castor stroke of a painting does not solitary create the impact of beauty, but all together, it becomes beautiful. A perfect flower is cute, when all of the petals together course its perfection; a pleasant, intoxicating odor is also part of the beauty.
In thinking about the question, 'What is dazzler?', I've just come away with the idea that I am the beholder whose heart it is in. Suffice information technology to say, my private assessment of what strikes me every bit beautiful is all I need to know.
Cheryl Anderson, Kenilworth, Illinois
Stendhal said, "Beauty is the promise of happiness", but this didn't become to the heart of the matter. Whose beauty are we talking nearly? Whose happiness?
Consider if a ophidian made fine art. What would it believe to be beautiful? What would it deign to make? Snakes accept poor eyesight and detect the earth largely through a chemosensory organ, the Jacobson's organ, or through heat-sensing pits. Would a movie in its human being form fifty-fifty make sense to a snake? So their art, their dazzler, would be entirely alien to ours: it would not be visual, and even if they had songs they would be strange; after all, snakes do not take ears, they sense vibrations. Then art would be sensed, and songs would be felt, if it is even possible to excogitate that idea.
From this perspective – a view low to the footing – we can come across that beauty is truly in the centre of the beholder. Information technology may cross our lips to speak of the nature of beauty in billowy language, but we do and so entirely with a forked tongue if we do so seriously. The aesthetics of representing beauty ought non to fool us into thinking beauty, as some abstract concept, truly exists. It requires a viewer and a context, and the value we place on certain combinations of colors or sounds over others speaks of nix more than preference. Our want for pictures, moving or otherwise, is considering our organs developed in such a way. A snake would have no apply for the visual globe.
I am thankful to have homo fine art over snake art, but I would no uncertainty be amazed at serpentine fine art. Information technology would require an intellectual sloughing of many conceptions we accept 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 art?' and 'What is beauty?' are different types and shouldn't be conflated.
With wearisome predictability, almost all contemporary discussers of art lapse into a 'relative-off', whereby they go to abrasive lengths to demonstrate how open-minded they are and how ineluctably loose the concept of fine art is. If art is only whatever you want it to be, can we not just end the chat in that location? It'due south a washed deal. I'll throw playdough on to a canvas, and nosotros can pretend to display our modern credentials of acceptance and insight. This just doesn't work, and nosotros all know it. If art is to hateful anything, in that location has to be some working definition of what it is. If art can be anything to anybody at anytime, then there ends the discussion. What makes art special – and worth discussing – is that information technology stands above or exterior everyday things, such as everyday food, paintwork, or sounds. Art comprises special or infrequent dishes, paintings, and music.
So what, then, is my definition of art? Briefly, I believe in that location must be at least two considerations to characterization something as 'art'. The get-go is that there must be something recognizable in the way of 'author-to-audience reception'. I mean to say, there must be the recognition that something was made 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 author doesn't have to tell you information technology'south art when you otherwise wouldn't have any idea. The second point is simply the recognition of skill: some obvious skill has to be involved in making art. This, in my view, would be the minimum requirements – or definition – of art. Even if yous disagree with the particulars, some definition is required to make anything at all art. Otherwise, what are we even discussing? I'g breaking the mold and ask for contumely tacks.
Brannon McConkey, Tennessee
Writer of Student of Life: Why Condign Engaged in Life, Art, and Philosophy Can Lead to a Happier Existence
Human beings appear to have a compulsion to categorize, to organize and define. We seek to impose order on a welter of sense-impressions and memories, seeing regularities and patterns in repetitions and associations, always on the lookout for correlations, eager to determine crusade and effect, so that we might give sense to what might otherwise seem random and inconsequential. Nonetheless, particularly in the final century, nosotros take also learned to take pleasure in the reflection of unstructured perceptions; our creative means of seeing and listening have expanded to embrace disharmony and irregularity. This has meant that culturally, an ever-widening gap has grown between the attitudes and opinions of the majority, who continue to define art in traditional means, having to do with order, harmony, representation; and the minority, who look for originality, who try to see the globe afresh, and strive for departure, and whose critical practice is rooted in brainchild. In between in that location are many who abjure both extremes, and who both notice and give pleasure both in defining a personal vision and in practising craftsmanship.
There will e'er be a challenge to traditional concepts of art from the shock of the new, and tensions effectually the appropriateness of our understanding. That is how things should be, as 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 technology of landing a probe on a comet, an accomplished poem, a hit portrait, the sound-world of a symphony. We apportion significance and significant to what we detect of value and wish to share with our fellows. Our fine art and our definitions of dazzler reflect our human nature and the multiplicity of our creative efforts.
In the end, because of our individuality and our varied histories and traditions, our debates volition always be inconclusive. If we are wise, we volition await and listen with an open spirit, and sometimes with a wry grinning, e'er celebrating the variety of human being imaginings and achievements.
David Howard, Church Stretton, Shropshire
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Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/What_is_Art_and_or_What_is_Beauty
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