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Art Is a Way an Individual See the World

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Question of the Month

What is Art? and/or What is Dazzler?

The following answers to this artful question each win a random book.

Art is something nosotros do, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, just it is even more than personal than that: it'southward about sharing the way we experience the globe, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the advice of intimate concepts that cannot exist faithfully portrayed by words alone. And because words alone are not enough, we must observe some other vehicle to carry our intent. Simply the content that nosotros instill on or in our chosen media is not in itself the art. Art is to be found in how the media is used, the way in which the content is expressed.

What then is beauty? Beauty is much more than than cosmetic: information technology is non about prettiness. In that location are plenty of pretty pictures available at the neighborhood home furnishing store; but these we might non refer to equally beautiful; and it is non difficult to observe works of artistic expression that we might concur are beautiful that are non necessarily pretty. Beauty is rather a measure of touch, a measure of emotion. In the context of art, beauty is the gauge of successful communication between participants – the conveyance of a concept between the creative person and the perceiver. Beautiful art is successful in portraying the artist's virtually profound intended emotions, the desired concepts, whether they be pretty and bright, or dark and sinister. Simply neither the artist nor the observer tin can be certain of successful advice in the end. So beauty in art is eternally subjective.

Wm. Joseph Nieters, Lake Ozark, Missouri


Works of art may elicit a sense of wonder or cynicism, promise or despair, adoration or spite; the piece of work of art may exist direct or circuitous, subtle or explicit, intelligible or obscure; and the subjects and approaches to the cosmos of art are divisional only by the imagination of the artist. Consequently, I believe that defining art based upon its content is a doomed enterprise.

Now a theme in aesthetics, the study of art, is the claim that at that place is a detachment or distance between works of art and the catamenia of everyday life. Thus, works of fine art rise similar islands from a current of more than pragmatic concerns. When you step out of a river and onto an isle, you've reached your destination. Similarly, the aesthetic attitude requires y'all to treat artistic experience every bit an end-in-itself: fine art asks us to go far empty of preconceptions and nourish to the manner in which we experience the work of fine art. And although a person tin have an 'artful experience' of a natural scene, season or texture, art is unlike in that it is produced. Therefore, art is the intentional advice of an feel as an terminate-in-itself. The content of that experience in its cultural context may determine whether the artwork is popular or ridiculed, significant or petty, merely it is art either way.

I of the initial reactions to this approach may be that it seems overly wide. An older brother who sneaks up backside his younger sibling and shouts "Booo!" can be said to exist creating fine art. But isn't the divergence between this and a Freddy Krueger moving picture just one of degree? On the other hand, my definition would exclude graphics used in ad or political propaganda, as they are created as a means to an end and not for their own sakes. Furthermore, 'communication' is non the all-time word for what I have in mind considering it implies an unwarranted intention nigh the content represented. Aesthetic responses are often underdetermined past the artist's intentions.

Mike Mallory, Everett, WA


The cardinal difference between fine art and beauty is that art is about who has produced it, whereas dazzler depends on who's looking.

Of form in that location are standards of dazzler – that which is seen as 'traditionally' beautiful. The game changers – the foursquare pegs, and so to speak – are those who saw traditional standards of beauty and decided specifically to go against them, perhaps only to prove a point. Take Picasso, Munch, Schoenberg, to name just three. They have made a stand up 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 non).

Fine art is a ways to state an stance or a feeling, or else to create a different view of the globe, whether it exist inspired past the work of other people or something invented that's entirely new. Beauty is whatever aspect of that or anything else that makes an individual feel positive or grateful. Beauty alone is non art, but fine art can exist made of, well-nigh or for beautiful things. Dazzler can be establish in a snowy mountain scene: fine art is the photograph of information technology shown to family, the oil interpretation of it hung in a gallery, or the music score recreating the scene in crotchets and quavers.

However, fine art is not necessarily positive: it can be deliberately hurtful or displeasing: it tin brand y'all think about or consider things that you lot would rather not. Only if it evokes an emotion in y'all, then it is art.

Chiara Leonardi, Reading, Berks


Art is a way of grasping the world. Non merely the physical world, which is what science attempts to practice; but the whole world, and specifically, the homo world, the world of club and spiritual experience.

Art emerged around fifty,000 years agone, long before cities and civilisation, notwithstanding in forms to which we can still directly relate. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves, which so startled Picasso, have been carbon-dated at effectually 17,000 years old. Now, following the invention of photography and the devastating attack made by Duchamp on the self-appointed Art Institution [run across Brief Lives this issue], fine art cannot be simply defined on the basis of concrete tests similar 'fidelity of representation' or vague abstruse concepts like 'beauty'. So how can we define art in terms applying to both cavern-dwellers and modern city sophisticates? To exercise this we demand to ask: What does art do? And the respond is surely that it provokes an emotional, rather than a simply cognitive response. I fashion of approaching the problem of defining art, and then, could be to say: Fine art consists of shareable ideas that accept a shareable emotional touch on. Fine art need non produce cute objects or events, since a great piece of art could validly agitate emotions other than those angry by beauty, such as terror, anxiety, or laughter. Yet to derive an acceptable philosophical theory of art from this understanding means tackling the concept of 'emotion' head on, and philosophers have been notoriously reluctant to practice this. But non all of them: Robert Solomon'due south book The Passions (1993) has fabricated an excellent start, and this seems to me to exist the fashion to get.

It won't be easy. Poor old Richard Rorty was jumped on from a very great height when all he said was that literature, poetry, patriotism, dearest and stuff like that were philosophically important. Art is vitally of import to maintaining broad standards in civilization. Its pedigree long predates philosophy, which is only 3,000 years sometime, and science, which is a mere 500 years old. Fine art deserves much more than attention from philosophers.

Alistair MacFarlane, Gwynedd


Some years ago I went looking for fine art. To brainstorm my journeying I went to an art gallery. At that stage art to me was whatever I found in an art gallery. I found paintings, by and large, and considering they were in the gallery I recognised them equally art. A item Rothko painting was ane color and large. I observed a further piece that did not accept an obvious label. It was as well of i colour – white – and gigantically big, occupying one complete wall of the very high and spacious room and standing on small roller wheels. On closer inspection I saw that it was a moveable wall, not a piece of fine art. Why could i piece of piece of work be considered 'fine art' and the other non?

The reply to the question could, perhaps, exist found in the criteria of Berys Gaut to decide if some artefact is, indeed, art – that art pieces function simply as pieces of art, just as their creators intended.

But were they beautiful? 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 work of art, be it painting, sculpture, book or performance. Of course, that expectation quickly changes as 1 widens the range of installations encountered. The classic instance is Duchamp's Fountain (1917), a rather un-beautiful urinal.

Tin we define beauty? Permit me try by suggesting that beauty is the chapters of an artefact to evoke a pleasurable emotional response. This might be categorised as the 'like' response.

I definitely did not like Fountain at the initial level of appreciation. There was skill, of course, in its structure. But what was the skill in its presentation as art?

So I began to reach a definition of art. A work of art is that which asks a question which a not-fine art object such as 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 judgement, a response to the invitation to reply. The reply, 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 make meaning beyond linguistic communication. Art consists in the making of significant through intelligent agency, eliciting an aesthetic response. It'due south a means of communication where language is not sufficient to explain or depict its content. Art tin render visible and known what was previously unspoken. Considering what art expresses and evokes is in part ineffable, we find information technology difficult to define and delineate it. It is known through the feel of the audition likewise every bit the intention and expression of the artist. The meaning is fabricated past all the participants, and so tin never exist fully known. It is multifarious and on-going. Even a disagreement is a tension which is itself an expression of something.

Art drives the development of a civilisation, both supporting the establishment and likewise preventing subversive letters from being silenced – art leads, mirrors and reveals change in politics and morality. Art plays a cardinal part in the creation of civilisation, and is an outpouring of thought and ideas from it, and and so it cannot be fully understood in isolation from its context. Paradoxically, withal, art can communicate beyond linguistic communication and time, appealing to our mutual humanity and linking disparate communities. Maybe if wider audiences engaged with a greater variety of the world's artistic traditions information technology could engender increased tolerance and mutual respect.

Some other inescapable facet of art is that it is a article. This fact feeds the creative process, whether motivating the artist to grade an item of budgetary value, or to avoid creating i, or to artistically commodify the aesthetic feel. The commodification of art also affects who is considered qualified to create art, comment on it, and even define information technology, every bit those who do good most strive to continue the value of 'art objects' high. These influences must feed into a culture'south agreement of what art is at any time, making thoughts about art culturally dependent. Nevertheless, this commodification and the consistent closely-guarded part of the art critic also gives ascension to a counter culture within fine art culture, often expressed through the creation of fine art that cannot be sold. The stratification of art by value and the resultant tension also adds to its meaning, and the meaning of fine art to society.

Catherine Bosley, Monk Soham, Suffolk


Showtime of all we must recognize the obvious. 'Art' is a word, and words and concepts are organic and change their meaning through time. So in the olden days, art meant arts and crafts. It was something y'all could excel at through exercise and difficult work. Y'all learnt how to paint or sculpt, and y'all learnt the special symbolism of your era. Through Romanticism and the nascency of individualism, art came to mean originality. To do something new and never-heard-of divers the creative person. His or her personality became essentially equally important every bit the artwork itself. During the era of Modernism, the search for originality led artists to reevaluate art. What could art do? What could information technology represent? Could you paint movement (Cubism, Futurism)? Could you paint the not-cloth (Abstract Expressionism)? Fundamentally: could anything be regarded as art? A style of trying to solve this problem was to expect beyond the work itself, and focus on the art world: art was that which the institution of fine art – artists, critics, art historians, etc – was prepared to regard as art, and which was made public through the institution, e.one thousand. galleries. That'due south Institutionalism – fabricated famous through Marcel Duchamp'due south ready-mades.

Institutionalism has been the prevailing notion through the later part of the twentieth century, at least in academia, and I would say it still holds a firm grip on our conceptions. One instance is the Swedish artist Anna Odell. Her film sequence Unknown woman 2009-349701, for which she faked psychosis to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, was widely debated, and past many was not regarded as fine art. But because information technology was debated past the art globe, it succeeded in breaking into the art world, and is today regarded as art, and Odell is regarded an artist.

Of class there are those who try and break out of this hegemony, for instance by refusing to play by the art world's unwritten rules. Andy Warhol with his Factory was one, even though he is today totally embraced by the art globe. Another example is Damien Hirst, who, much like Warhol, pays people to create the concrete manifestations of his ideas. He doesn't utilise galleries and other art world-approved arenas to annunciate, and instead sells his objects straight to individual individuals. This liberal approach to capitalism is one way of attacking the hegemony of the fine art world.

What does all this teach united states of america nigh art? Probably that art is a fleeting and chimeric concept. Nosotros will always have art, but for the nearly part we volition only really acquire in retrospect what the fine art of our era was.

Tommy Törnsten, Linköping, Sweden


Fine art periods such as Classical, Byzantine, neo-Classical, Romantic, Modern and mail service-Modern reflect the changing nature of art in social and cultural contexts; and shifting values are evident in varying content, forms and styles. These changes are encompassed, more or less in sequence, by 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 'fabric counterparts' or 'mere real things' rather than artworks. Nevertheless the competing theories, works of art can be seen to possess 'family resemblances' or 'strands of resemblance' linking very different instances every bit 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 up' concept.

Co-ordinate to Raymond Williams' Keywords (1976), capitalised 'Fine art' appears in general apply in the nineteenth century, with 'Fine art'; whereas 'art' has a history of previous applications, such every bit in music, poetry, comedy, tragedy and dance; and we should also mention literature, media arts, fifty-fifty gardening, which for David Cooper in A Philosophy of Gardens (2006) can provide "epiphanies of co-dependence". Art, then, is possibly "anything presented for our aesthetic contemplation" – a phrase coined by John Davies, one-time tutor at the Schoolhouse of Fine art Education, Birmingham, in 1971 – although 'anything' may seem too inclusive. Gaining our artful involvement is at least a necessary requirement of fine art. Sufficiency for something to be fine art requires significance to fine art appreciators which endures as long as tokens or types of the artwork persist. Paradoxically, such significance is sometimes attributed to objects neither intended as art, nor particularly intended to be perceived aesthetically – for instance, votive, devotional, commemorative or utilitarian artefacts. Furthermore, aesthetic interests can be eclipsed by dubious investment practices and social kudos. When combined with celebrity and harmful forms of narcissism, they tin egregiously affect artistic authenticity. These interests can be overriding, and spawn products masquerading as art. Then it's upwards to discerning observers to spot any Fads, Fakes and Fantasies (Sjoerd Hannema, 1970).

Colin Brookes, Loughborough, Leicestershire


For me fine art is cypher more than and nix less than the artistic ability of individuals to limited their understanding of some attribute of private or public life, like dear, disharmonize, fear, or pain. As I read a war poem by Edward Thomas, enjoy a Mozart piano concerto, or contemplate a M.C. Escher drawing, I am ofttimes emotionally inspired past the moment and intellectually stimulated by the thought-procedure that follows. At this moment of discovery I humbly realize my views may be those shared by thousands, fifty-fifty millions beyond the globe. This is due in large part to the mass media's ability to control and exploit our emotions. The commercial success of a performance or production becomes the metric past which art is now well-nigh exclusively gauged: quality in art has been sadly reduced to equating groovy art with sale of books, number of views, or the downloading of recordings. Too bad if personal sensibilities about a detail piece of art are lost in the greater rush for immediate acceptance.

So where does that leave the subjective notion that beauty can still be found in art? If dazzler is the outcome of a process by which art gives pleasure to our senses, then it should remain a matter of personal discernment, even if exterior forces clamour to have control of it. In other words, nobody, including the art critic, should be able to tell the individual what is beautiful and what is non. The world of art is one of a abiding tension between preserving individual tastes and promoting popular acceptance.

Ian Malcomson, Victoria, British Columbia


What we perceive every bit cute does non offend u.s.a. on any level. It is a personal sentence, a subjective opinion. A memory from once we gazed upon something beautiful, a sight e'er and then pleasing to the senses or to the eye, oft time stays with us forever. I shall never forget walking into Balzac's firm in France: the scent of lilies was so overwhelming that I had a numinous moment. The intensity of the emotion evoked may not be possible to explicate. I don't feel it's important to debate why I think a flower, painting, sunset or how the light streaming through a stained-glass window is beautiful. The power of the sights create an emotional reaction in me. I don't expect or business concern myself that others will agree with me or non. Can all hold that an human action of kindness is beautiful?

A thing of beauty is a whole; elements coming together making it then. A single castor stroke of a painting does not lone create the impact of beauty, but all together, it becomes beautiful. A perfect flower is beautiful, when all of the petals together form its perfection; a pleasant, intoxicating scent is too part of the dazzler.

In thinking nigh the question, 'What is beauty?', I've simply come away with the idea that I am the beholder whose eye information technology is in. Suffice it to say, my individual cess of what strikes me as beautiful is all I need to know.

Cheryl Anderson, Kenilworth, Illinois


Stendhal said, "Dazzler is the promise of happiness", but this didn't get to the heart of the matter. Whose beauty are we talking near? Whose happiness?

Consider if a serpent made art. What would it believe to be beautiful? What would it deign to make? Snakes have poor eyesight and detect the world largely through a chemosensory organ, the Jacobson'south organ, or through heat-sensing pits. Would a picture in its human form even make sense to a snake? So their art, their beauty, would exist entirely alien to ours: information technology would not be visual, and even if they had songs they would exist foreign; after all, snakes do not have ears, they sense vibrations. So fine fine art would exist sensed, and songs would be felt, if information technology is fifty-fifty possible to excogitate that idea.

From this perspective – a view low to the ground – we can see that dazzler is truly in the eye of the beholder. It may cross our lips to speak of the nature of beauty in billowy language, but we exercise so entirely with a forked natural language if we practise so seriously. The aesthetics of representing beauty ought not to fool us into thinking beauty, equally some abstract concept, truly exists. Information technology requires a viewer and a context, and the value we place on certain combinations of colors or sounds over others speaks of nothing more than than preference. Our desire for pictures, moving or otherwise, is because our organs adult in such a way. A serpent would take no utilize for the visual earth.

I am thankful to have human art over snake art, but I would no doubt be amazed at serpentine art. Information technology would require an intellectual sloughing of many conceptions we have for granted. For that, considering the possibility of this farthermost thought is worthwhile: if snakes could write poetry, what would it 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 boring predictability, almost all contemporary discussers of art lapse into a 'relative-off', whereby they go to annoying lengths to demonstrate how open-minded they are and how ineluctably loose the concept of art is. If art is just whatever you want it to exist, can we not just end the conversation there? Information technology'due south a done deal. I'll throw playdough on to a canvas, and nosotros tin pretend to display our modern credentials of acceptance and insight. This but doesn't piece of work, and we all know it. If fine art is to mean anything, at that place has to be some working definition of what information technology is. If fine art can exist anything to everyone at anytime, then there ends the discussion. What makes art special – and worth discussing – is that information technology stands above or outside everyday things, such as everyday food, paintwork, or sounds. Art comprises special or exceptional dishes, paintings, and music.

So what, then, is my definition of art? Briefly, I believe there must be at least two considerations to label something as 'fine art'. The commencement is that there must exist something recognizable in the manner of 'author-to-audience reception'. I mean to say, there must exist the recognition that something was made for an audience of some kind to receive, discuss or savour. Implicit in this betoken is the evident recognizability of what the art really is – in other words, the writer doesn't have to tell you it's art when you otherwise wouldn't have any idea. The second point is but the recognition of skill: some obvious skill has to exist involved in making art. This, in my view, would be the minimum requirements – or definition – of art. Even if you disagree with the particulars, some definition is required to make anything at all fine art. Otherwise, what are nosotros even discussing? I'm breaking the mold and ask for brass tacks.

Brannon McConkey, Tennessee
Author of Student of Life: Why Becoming Engaged in Life, Art, and Philosophy Tin Lead to a Happier Beingness


Human being 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 cause and outcome, so that nosotros might give sense to what might otherwise seem random and inconsequential. All the same, particularly in the final century, we have too learned to have pleasure in the reflection of unstructured perceptions; our creative ways of seeing and listening have expanded to encompass disharmony and irregularity. This has meant that culturally, an always-widening gap has grown between the attitudes and opinions of the majority, who keep to define fine art in traditional ways, having to practise with lodge, harmony, representation; and the minority, who look for originality, who try to see the world anew, and strive for difference, and whose critical practice is rooted in abstraction. In between there are many who abjure both extremes, and who both notice and give pleasance both in defining a personal vision and in practising adroitness.

There will always be a challenge to traditional concepts of art from the shock of the new, and tensions around the ceremoniousness of our understanding. That is how things should exist, every bit innovators push at the boundaries. At the same time, we volition continue to take pleasure 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 striking portrait, the sound-globe of a symphony. Nosotros apportion significance and significant to what we find of value and wish to share with our fellows. Our art and our definitions of beauty reflect our human being nature and the multiplicity of our artistic efforts.

In the stop, because of our individuality and our varied histories and traditions, our debates will ever exist inconclusive. If we are wise, we will expect and listen with an open up spirit, and sometimes with a wry smile, e'er celebrating the diverseness of human imaginings and achievements.

David Howard, Church building Stretton, Shropshire


Next Question of the Month

The next question is: What's The More than Important: Freedom, Justice, Happiness, Truth? Please give and justify your rankings in less than 400 words. The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain. Subject lines should exist marked 'Question of the Month', and must be received by 11th Baronial. If you want a chance of getting a book, please include your physical address. Submission is permission to reproduce your respond physically and electronically.

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Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/What_is_Art_and_or_What_is_Beauty

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