ART, WHAT IS IT?

“It is an outlet for the natural primordial need to externalise internal images and preserve

sensual experience in an independent form, communicating

and hence validating such experience”

The Gulbenkian Report

“Art is the lie that reveals the greater truth” Ruskin

“Neither the eye nor the mind can seeitself, unless reflected upon that which itresembles”

Shelley “In Defence of Poetry”

3 CRITERIA

• THE INTENTION CRITERION: • THE QUALITY OF THE WORK• THE RESPONSE OF THE

SPECTATORS.

• WHAT MAKES A GOOD WORK OF ART?

1. Inducing emotion in the viewer– Empathy– Catharsis– Shared experience2. Inexhaustibility3. Conveys a moral lesson

"During the Cold War, the CIA subsidized the avant-garde through front organizations such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which supported abstract expressionist painters as well as intellectual magazines like Encounter, Monat, and Partisan Review. The idea was precisely not to attach political strings to specific artists or projects, but to show ambivalent foreign elites that Western capitalist democracy constituted the most fertile ground for artistic freedom."

SHARON L. BUTLER | September 24, 2007 “THE AMERICAN PROSPECT”

• “I can draw no distinctions [] between moral and aesthetic values: beauty, being a good, is a moral good…harmony which might be called an aesthetic principle, is also the principle of health, of justice and of happiness” Santayana

THE PARADOX OF AESTHETICJUDGEMENT

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ versus

‘Universal standards of good art’

WIMSLATT AND BEARDSLEY would argue that:

• “THE DESIGN OR INTENTION OF THE AUTHOR IS NOT DESIRABLE AS A STANDARD FOR JUDGING THE SUCCESS OF A WORK OF ART”

Kant's formalist conception of beauty might rule out the aesthetics of painting altogether, because it might be argued, under his hypothesis, that the visual arts are hindered, or contaminated, by concepts. For Kant, beauty lies in nature, in the free, abstracted and concept-free play of light and shadow in a field of flowers.

The Canon

The word connoisseurship comes from the Latin cognoscere, to know. It involves the ability to see, not merely to look. To do this we have to develop the ability to name and appreciate the different dimensions of situations and experiences, and the way they relate one to another. We have to be able to draw upon, and make use of, a wide array of information. We also have to be able to place our experiences and understandings in a wider context, and connect them with our values and commitments. Connoisseurship is something that needs to be worked at – but it is not a technical exercise. The bringing together of the different elements into a whole involves artistry [M Smith].

Art as:KnowledgeEducation

Communication

• “Art can amplify man’s short time on this earth by enabling him to receive from another, the whole range of someone else’s life long experiences with all their problems, colours and flavours. Art recreates in flesh, experiences that have been lived by other men and enables people to absorb them as if they were their own” Alexander Solzhenitsyn

• “It must be recognised that the spiritual is not synonymous with the religious. In fact it is intrinsic to the human condition . The word "Spiritual" is derived from word for breath. It cannot be caged within the confines of religion. Religion derives from word to bind. The spirit cannot be bound” Peter Abbs

• “The spiritual creates a whole out of our predicament as humans of being between nature and knowledge...” Peter Abbs

• “The church ceased to be a centre of spiritual life in the 18th century when propaganda and ritual took over. At that time the arts became the natural home of spiritual values and the role of the priest and spiritual responsibility taken over by the artist” Peter Abbs

• Roger Scruton said that “In the 19th century the aesthetic was akin to the sacramental”

• propositional knowledge, is the species of knowledge that is, by its very nature, expressed in declarative sentences or indicative propositions. This distinguishes descriptive knowledge from what is commonly known as "know-how", or procedural knowledge (the knowledge of how, and especially how best, to perform some task), and "knowing of," or knowledge by acquaintance (the knowledge of something's existence)

• “The purpose of Art is not to comfort the afflicted rather to afflict the comfortable.”

• “Life imitates art more than art imitates life” Oscar Wilde

WHAT IS ART?• 3 CRITERIA • The Intention Criterion:• The Quality Of The Work• The Response Of The SpectatorsWHAT MAKES A GOOD WORK OF ART?• the paradox of aesthetic judgement:• the intentional fallacy• canons• ConnoisseurshipART AND KNOWLEDGE• Art as imitation • Art as communication• Art as education• Art as communication UNIVERSAL STANDARDSCULTURAL DIFFERENCESMORAL TRUTHSCIENCE AND ART AND TRUTH

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