The Most Unwanted Song

Since we have been talking about taste the past few days in class, I have been think a lot about how some of the things we actually like are really bad. A couple scientists took a poll and figured out exactly what people hate in music and composed the most unwanted song in America, which is actually pretty awesome.

Through the Looking Glass

I recently came across this article, which outlines the research of the artist David Hockney (and others) into the use of various technologies of optical reproduction by many of the "Old Masters" of painting, and I thought some of you might find it interesting in connection with our discussion of Merleau-Ponty's "Eye and Mind."


Most of the article is devoted to explaining the optical devices (like the camera obscura, above) that may have assisted in the creation of some well-known masterpieces, as well as to Hockney's attempts to "prove" that these instruments were used in spite of the absence of documentary evidence. In other words, Hockney tries to demonstrate that these artists must have made use of such technological assistance simply on the basis of the artworks themselves, and they way that objects are arranged spatially within them.

While much of the article reads, to be honest, like a pitch for Hockney's book Secret Knowledge, in which the research behind these claims is presented, it still gives a nice synopsis of the ideas and a few clear illustrations of how these techniques can be seen in some familiar paintings. Still, the really interesting part of the article (to my mind) comes at the end, when Hockney contends with some of the critical responses that his claims have provoked since he introduced them about a decade ago. While he clearly does not want his research to be associated with the accusations of "cheating" that some people hear in it, and so defends the artists in that respect, he also makes it clear that, like Merleau-Ponty, he sees the paradigm of the optical perfection of perspective that reigned in painting from about the 15th century until the advent of photography (the perfection of the dream of mechanical production of images) as a falling away from the true task of the painter--and points to his preference for (surprise, surprise)...


Cezanne's way of placing these apples before the viewer to the detached, impersonal perspective offered by Chardin's (more technically perfect) peaches.


I'm curious to hear what you think about the article, so feel free to make use of the comments section. Anyone who's interested in this issue might consider reading Hockney's book (or others that I could recommend) as the research for a presentation.

My Old Roomie the Artist

Hey guys. So as you may know from my comments in class, I really don't know much about the art scene around Memphis. I know that occasionally there are exhibits on Broad Street and that there is a Trolley Art Tour on Main. I have no idea when either of these occur because my old link to the art world graduated. I used to live with a girl named Alex Carter. Some of the art majors may know her but for those of you who do not she was an art major and is an amazing artist. My house was once adorned with her wonderful art and made to look like an art gallery. Now it looks like a few college girls who have no idea what to hang on the walls live there. I wanted to share with you all her work. It is very unusual but I really enjoy it and miss seeing it around the house. Unfortunately, as far as I know, her art is no longer around Memphis. She does have a web site though and I encourage you all to look at it. Her art is very interesting and different. Enjoy!

http://alexcarter.30art.com/

Lacy

Paper and Wood Art Exhibit

There is currently an interesting art exhibit up at Christian Brothers in the Beverly and Sam Ross Gallery (the lower level of the Plough Library). The exhibition is displaying Martha Kelly's works on paper as contrasted by her husband's, Elmore Holmes, handmade furniture.

I just thought this might be an interesting exhibit for people to see in relation to Plato's thoughts on the three gradations of mimesis.

The exhibits hours if you are interested:

Mon-Thurs 7:45am -11pm

Fri 7:45am-4:30pm

Sat 12-4/Sun 3pm-11pm

Is There Objective Beauty?

I wanted to re-post something from my own blog, along with the discussion I had with an anonymous philosopher. Feel free to read the whole thing at http://austinfreeman.blogspot.com (shameless plug)

I believe that beauty is indeed objective, though it comes to us subjectively. Beauty is an attribute of God, and as all Divine attributes is eternal, absolute, and universal. God's other attributes (truth, goodness, justice, power, etc.) are all the source from which we draw our conceptions of these things in the world, and I think it is the same with beauty. Just as all of these other attributes have an absolute (and thus objective) reality or fulfillment in God, so absolute (and thus objective) beauty can also be found there.

We see reflections of this perfect beauty in the world, in varied and diverse places, all of which give us a glimpse of that true, perfect beauty beyond this world (forgive me for sounding Platonic), in God. So the different reflections of this attribute, each impacting us in different ways and to different degrees, are all facets of ultimate and objective beauty. So while it may seem that beauty is subjective on one level, of we "zoom out" and consider God, we can see that objective beauty exists because it finds its absolute in Him.

I'll post the comments as comments.

Poets vs. Writers

I know that within the context of the class we're mostly dealing with images, but in my work (both narrative and philosophical) I'm dealing to a great extent with the notion of aesthetics in writing, particularly when that writing is philosophical or indicative of some kind of thoughtful activity on the part of the writer. How can we differentiate the context from the content? Should there be a differentiation at all? What is the importance of the reader? These questions don't have objective answers, really, but they certainly bear examination.

A really important work for me is the essay "What is Literature?" by the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. I've embedded the essay here—I think it's definitely worth a read if you've got the time. The first few pages, though, are where Sartre deals most explicitly with how art—painting, music, poetry, prose, etc.—functions representationally. On page 30, in a turn that doesn't seem too out of line with Plato's thoughts about poetry in The Republic, Sartre notes that

For the poet, language is a structure of the external world. The speaker isin a situation in language; he is invested by words. They are prolongations of his senses, his pincers, his antennae, his spectacles. He manœveres them from within; he feels them as if they were his body; he is surrounded by a verbal body which he is hardly conscious of and which extends his action upon the world. The poet is outside language. He sees the reverse side of words, as if he did not share the human condition and as if he were first meeting the word as a barrier as he comes towards men. Instead of first knowing things by their name, it seems that first he has a silent contact with them, since, turning towards that other species of thing which for him is the word, touching words, testing them, fingering them, he discovers in them a slight luminosity of their own and particular affinities with the earth, the sky, the water, and all created things.

Not knowing how to use them as a sign of an aspect of the world, he sees in the word the image of one of these aspects. And the verbal image he chooses for its resemblance to the willow tree or the ash tree is not necessarily the word which we use to designate these objects. As he is already on the outside, he considers words as a trap to catch a fleeing reality rather than as indicators which throw him out of himself into the midst of things. In short, all language is for him the mirror of the world. As a result, important changes take place in the internal economy of the word. Its sonority, its length, its masculine or feminine endings, its visual aspect, compose for him a face of flesh which represents rather than expresses meaning. Inversely, as the meaning is realized, the physical aspect of the word is reflected within it, and it, in its turn, functions as an image of the verbal body. Like its sign, too, for it has lost its preeminence; since words, like things, are given, the poet does not decide wheter the former exist for the latter or vice versa.

What Sartre's getting at here, I think, is that poets don't occupy the same sort of philosophical space as prose writers because their approach to language is based in creation. "Suppose the painter portrays houses?" Sartre asks on page 27. "That's just it. He makes them, that is, he creates an imaginary house on the canvas and not a sign of a house." This is the function of the poet as well, to create an image rather than a representation of one.

I don't mean for this to be my presentation, but it's something that I've been exploring and I thought some other folks might find it interesting as well. The rest of the essay diverges from a discussion of art, less out of Sartre's dismissal of poetry than his primary interest in what literature means as a method of communication and an expression of human freedom. Let me know what you think.

What is Beauty?

I wanted to just share some thoughts on the beauty and art that I had been having. I use a lot of intuition and go through it in an exploratory way, like a basic version of the Socratic Method, but I think it helps me realize more and more of how I really think of something, even if it’s different from the initial ideas. In any case, I just wanted some input on it, on whether you think I’m starting out in a right way.

I started by asking in the back of my mind “What is Beauty?” That was obviously very convoluted, and so I looked towards examples of things I found beautiful, not on a small scale, but things I felt really deeply had a beauty to them. I started looking at a few things, and realized that, like Mill, I felt there were separations of beauty: that is, there could be more than one type of beauty. I came to this by realizing that something was only beautiful, or could only be called beautiful, if it fit a certain mold.

If something is beautiful, it has to be art. By that I mean it has to evoke some experience beyond the simply functional. Simply using a urinal, treating it as a mere means, would not evoke an experience of art. However, if someone begins to contemplate not only the function of the urinal but its composition, etc, it could cross the threshold of art. This allows me to say a couple of things. One, art can be almost anything. This seems to fit, as we know there are many different types of art that many different people disagree and agree on. Secondly, to be art, it must be experienced by a self-conscious agent capable of reflection and understanding, or at least recognizing, the experience. I realized that if a dog saw a sign, it would see the sign. It might even understand, after learned and trained behavior, that the sign signifies something, or acts a means of location. But it would lack the ability to appreciate the sign for what it is, or to experience the sign in a “deeper” way. (I have to apologize if some of what I’m saying is vague, but art and beauty for me borderline on being qualia or very intangible and ineffable at times.)

In some sense, I think of a physics experience. From t (negative infinity) to t (almost 0) an object or creation, the moon and the earth, a painting and a cityscape exists solely as objects that exist, nothing more. However, at t(0), when a self-consciously aware entity engages the object and has an experience, it becomes art. If they do not have some experience of it beyond functional, it simply stays an object. If, however, they experience it as art, then it has the potential to be either “beautiful or not beautiful.” I hesitate to say beautiful or “ugly’, as that brings in a lot of connotations that I wish to stay away from. Something can be beautiful or not beautiful, sure, but what is it that makes it go either right or left? There can be no beauty without self conscious experience, but how do we know what’s beautiful?

Even though it’s subjective, I think it has to do with two different aspects that come together. One is a bit vague, but at the moment it’s the closest I can get to explaining it. Something is only beautiful to you if the experience of the item evokes a certain “goodness” within you. I refrain from using the language of right and wrong because I don’t consider beauty moral. This “goodness” comes in a variety of forms. For example: I hear a certain part of “Nivaos” by E. S. Posthumus that’s simply beautiful. When I hear it, I feel an emotional response, or something more, from inside, that resonates in me, a “goodness.” I know for a fact that, to me, this is art, and it is beautiful. I look at a watercolor painting by some famous painter from 300 years ago, and I’m awe stricken by the way in which he has used the medium. The canvas, the colors, the lights and darks, the composition of the painting seems to simply be more than art, and again, the experience elicits a “goodness” from me. I consider it beautiful, not necessarily out of the same emotion or feeling from the Nivaos experience, but from the image’s worth in itself. However, I also look at a picture by Dahli, of Christ being crucified on a Hypercube. I consider it art and beautiful, not because it is done well or the colors match, but because of what it is expressing. The combination of spirituality, the ideas of Christ as God, and the idea of transcending space and time come together to create a truly intellectually refreshing experience, similar to the intellectual pleasure coined by utilitarianism. It is beautiful.

So this leaves me to think that beauty is assigned to an object that we have an experience with that elicits some “goodness” in us, whether it’s emotional, intangible, or appreciation of its composition. There may be more types, but I have stayed with these three as they are my most prominent.

The 2^nd aspect of beauty comes in what can be described as scarcity, non-expectedness, or surprise. An Eskimo in Alaska deals with snow on an hour to hour basis. For him, it exists as an existence, and while he might do things with it and appreciate it, he might consider it simply art. However, a man who has lived in Florida his entire life finally sees snow for the first time, and finds it beautiful. What is it about the two situations, besides the obvious, that makes it beautiful for one but not the other? It seems to have something to do with what type of beauty it is (intellectual? Physical? Emotional?) and how often one has encountered it. He encounters snow, finds it beautiful; the next time it snows, he finds it beautiful once again. After the 100^th time he sees snow, something happens. It may not be simply functional, and he still may consider it art, but that initial type of beauty has faded. He, like the Eskimo, is no longer necessarily awed by it, and has no desire to make it beautiful. The experience does not elicit goodness. He may find it intellectually beautiful, possibly, but if he doesn’t, it may lose its status and become simply art.

If art is beautiful at some point, does that mean it is beautiful forever, even if it is lost? I’m not sure. The example earlier would have me believe no, but it’s possible that in some way it does.

Basically for me it comes down to this.

If a thing is not experienced, it remains a thing.

If a self-consciously aware, reasonably intelligent entity encounters this thing and ahs an experience of it, it becomes art.

If the experience of the art brings about a certain “goodness”, whatever that may be, it can be beautiful.

If that entity dies and no one ever sees/hears/tastes that item again, it may lose its classification of beauty. If the tree falls in the wilderness and no one hears it, it makes a sound, but simply that.

Beauty itself can be put in many different types. These types determine how readily someone may identify it as beautiful, as well as how long it can remain in that status.

There must be a “surprise” or “Un-usual” or “scarcity” aspect to most of beauty, sometimes to have it transform from art, sometimes simply to have it recognized and experienced.

There can be no beauty without experience. There can be no experience of beauty without consciousness that understand that “I am I, and that is that, and I am experienced that in x and y ways.”

This is basically what I have come to so far, and I look forward to reading what you guys think.

Some links, in case you guys were wondering at some of the things I referenced.

The Dali Picture: http://tinyurl.com/mf4rle

Nivaos: http://tinyurl.com/mekvwg

Welcome

One way that I hope everyone will feel free to use this blog is as a space to share links to aesthetics-related information that might be of interest to others in the course. In that spirit, I wanted to draw your attention to the University of Kent's online archive of recorded lectures on aesthetics. I haven't had a chance to listen to much of this yet, but it looks like there's some good stuff there.