3/19

 Art Exposure  Aesthetic Judgments  Universal Standards  How do/should you judge art?

 Is this song art? Consider any discussions or notes from last week!

 Main Questions: What distinguishes good art from bad? How much of it is objective? How much is influenced by culture we grow up in? How much is influenced by personal taste?

 It is a paradox On one hand: there are STANDARDS of aesthetic judgment and some judgments are better than others On the other hand: beauty is in the eye of the beholder and there is no accounting for taste

 Standards of Judgment Justifies a teacher grading a piece of creative writing, or a composition, or a painting Suggests that there are criteria for distinguishing good art from bad

 Taste You cannot argue about tastes in the arts (similar to tastes in food, right?) You like it or you don’t. But can we educate are tastes?!

 “Michael Jordan was one of the best basketball players of all time.”  Is this a fact or an opinion?  How is it similar and how is it difference from the kinds of judgments we see in art?

 “It is a great work of art, but I don’t like it.”  How, if at all, can someone say this with consistency?

 Immanuel Kant ( )  Big difference between judgments of taste and aesthetic judgments  AJ = make a universal claim and have a sense of “ought” built into them

 1. I like this painting  2. This painting is beautiful.  Statement 1 Differences can coexist.  Statement 2 Contradicting each other “beautiful” implies other ppl should see it too

 In our aesthetic judgments we are “suitors for agreement”

 What distinguishes aesthetic judgments from personal taste?  They are disinterested.

 If you are going to judge a work of art based on its merits, you should not bring your biography with you.

 Kant – we should look at art disinterestedly.  DOES NOT mean we should be uninterested, but we should go beyond our individual tastes and preferences  We need to appreciate it from a more universal stand point.  You don’t have to like something to appreciate it.

 “It is a great work of art, but I don’t like it.”  What are some examples of this in your own life?

3/23

 Art Exposure  Are there universal standards in art?  How do you judge art?

 Experience Through Inquiry Artwork: What do I see? Context: What else can I learn? Interpretation: What does it mean? Connections Across Art: How does it compare to other artworks? Personal: What does it mean to me? Connections across subjects: How does it relate to other subject? Connections to Quotes….

 Experience Through Inquiry  The Singing Butler – Jack Vettriano

 Write down 5-10 adjectives that come to your mind when you look at the painting

 5-10 adjectives again

 1 – Compare your lists with your partners. Similarities? Differences?  2 -What, if anything, does this suggest to you about the nature of aesthetic judgment?  Painting 1: The Lake, Pentworth: Sunset, a Stag Drinking – Turner  Painting 2: The Mud Bath - Bomberg

 Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid Similar universality in musical tastes Similar tastes in art – landscape paintings?  Biology? American Dominance?

 Do you think the world is becoming culturally more homogeneous?  To what extent do you think that your own cultural tradition is under threat?

 To what extent do you think there are universal standards of what makes a face a face beautiful?  To what extent do you think it varies from culture to culture?

 Are people seeing similarities because they WANT to see similarities?  There may be universal ELEMENTS to different parts of art, but we should be careful not to blind ourselves to the differences.

 How much can we learn about the way a culture sees the world by studying the art that it produces?

 South African Art  “Fishing Boats” – Irma Stern