Up@dawn 2.0

Monday, September 2, 2019

First look into aesthetics and art theory


Here, I will discuss the Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2. 

In the Introduction, Freeland explains that the field of aesthetics and art theory is concerned with establishing a framework with which we can try to determine the meaning of works of art and their value. She cites six different major categories of art theory; ritual theory, formalist theory, imitation theory, expression theory, cognitive theory, and postmodern theory. These are the areas she will explore in the book.

Immanuel Kant
The first chapter begins with a discussion of how, in the past, one might argue that art is similar to ritual because it can involve a group brought together
by shared values and goals. However, Freeland points out that much modern art fails to unite viewers and often shocks and repels them. That, in a world of mechanization and mass production, artists must turn to self-expression and shock to garner attention. Blood, feces, urine, and semen have become part of the artist's palette, a development that eighteenth-century philosopher, David Hume have would have hardly approved of this development. Hume wrote about art, morality, and taste, urging artists to promote the values of the Enlightenment, especially, progress and moral improvement.


Aesthetics, or taste in more familiar terms, was the topic of much debate in the eighteenth century amongst philosophers like Hume and Immanuel Kant. Both men argued that some works of art were intrinsically better than others. They approached this conclusion from different angles, Hume felt that people, through a combination of education and experience, reached a consensus about what constituted beauty. Kant believed that the beauty in art lay in the object itself. To Kant, a beautiful thing displayed an internal harmony and elicited the "free play" of our imaginations. Beautiful things lacked a true purpose other than existing for the pleasure of it. 

David Hume
Kant's view held a major influence until well into the twentieth century when the tide shifted as work that was repulsive and negative became accepted as art.

Chapter Two takes us back to the Greeks and Plato's criticism of all art as imitation. He felt that art was only an imitation of things in our world, which were themselves merely representations of ideas. Plato's pupil, Aristotle, argued that this imitation was only natural for humans and that we could learn from the examples it provided. This "imitation theory" was the basis of the view that art was a quest for more and more accurate depictions of reality. 

Andy Warhol with his "Brillo Boxes"
The advent of photography put an end to imitation theory and freed artists from trying to emulate nature. From the impressionists to the expressionists to the abstract expressionists and beyond, artists pushed the envelope moving further and further away from imitation. The French post-Impressionist painter, Paul Gauguin, declared that "Art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionary."

By the time that Andy Warhol arrives on the scene with his Brillo Boxes, the boundaries of what is art are called in to question as never before. Philosopher Arthur Danto determined that anything can be a work of art if it conveys meaning. That art doesn't have to be beautiful or moral. Of course, saying something is art does not necessarily mean it is good art.

All images are in the public domain.

3 comments:

  1. Very nice, Art. Looking forward to learning a lot with you on this topic.

    (But, btw, your images of Kant and Hume have the names reversed. Hume's the guy in the funny hat.)

    I have to say, as an unsophisticated consumer/appreciator of art who merely "knows what I like," that I find both Kant's and Hume's positions more appealing than that of the modernists who find it necessary to resort to shock and outrage in order to gain an audience. But then, if Kant and Hume had lived in our time they might have been less focused on Enlightenment values, harmony and order etc.

    I'd love to know more, if you have occasion to consider it, of what Kant meant by the "sublime" in art.

    As usual, I side with Aristotle. Objecting to a work of art as an imitation (except in cases of plagiarism-though Gaugin's either/or seems extreme, or simply derivative unoriginality) strikes me as strange, even for a metaphysical Platonist.

    It's much easier to agree with Danto when we attach the observation that while anything goes, that's no guarantee that just anything will be good.

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  2. Dang it, sorry about Kant/Hume. I still struggle with the interface. To me, classical art is more about teaching the viewer while modern art seeks to make the viewer think for themselves. Picasso said "We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth." Have a great Labor Day, I saw Sydney over on the trail at Barfield Park this morning.

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  3. I don't grasp the distinction, in my own line of teaching. I always try to be a constructive provocateur, as I imagine the classical arts also did - in their relatively understated way.

    Is art a lie? People say that about literary fiction too, but I think the format of fiction is not a "lie"... it's a pretense, granted. But "lie" sounds harsh.

    Hey to Sydney!

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