The Arts Part II

In this lecture we’ll be discussing the following points: 1. Are aesthetic judgments objective or subjective? 2. How do the arts help us understand the world? I.e., what is the relationship between art and reality? 3. What are the similarities and differences between the arts and the sciences/mathematics?

Judging Art The paradox of aesthetic judgment: – On the one hand, we definitely believe that there are standards of aesthetic judgment (that some judgments are better than others. – On the other hand, we say that beauty is subjective, and accept that everyone has their own taste.

Both appear to be simultaneously true. There are definitely standards by which we judge good art. But then it’s also true that you can’t argue about taste in art and more than you can argue about taste in food. I hate oysters and love hamburgers: you cannot tell me that I am “wrong.” So why should you tell me I am wrong if I hate Shakespeare and love J.K. Rowling?

(It may be worth noting here that our tastes do change. I can’t imagine every liking oysters, but as I “educate” my palette I might grow to like them. I might “appreciate” French food but not love it… If I can educate my taste buds, perhaps I can also educate my aesthetic judgments…)

Kantian Disinterest According to philosopher Immanuel Kant ( ), there is a huge difference between judgments of taste and aesthetic judgments. Aesthetic judgments make a universal claim, and imply that you should agree with them. Compare: – “I like this song.” – “This song is beautiful.”

If I say I like the song and you say you don’t, the statements can still coexist. If I say it is beautiful and you say it is not beautiful, then we have two statements that contradict one another. Only one can be right. What distinguishes these two types of statements is that aesthetic judgments are disinterested.

Being disinterested. You may like a picture of an ice-cream cone because you are hungry. You may like a play because you are in love with the lead actress, or a song because it reminds you of a happy time in your life. In these cases you are interested. If you are going to judge a work of art on its merits you should not bring your biography with you. – Lincoln example. – Sports parallel. (NB: being disinterested does not mean being uninterested.)

Maybe we should have standard in the arts in the way that we do in sports (although it’s easier to determine a winner in sports…) All the same, if someone says Shakespeare is a useless writer they are just as wrong as if they think Michael Jordan was a bad basketball player. This does not mean that everyone should like Shakespeare, but you can acknowledge that he is a good writer even if you don’t.

Universal Standards Are there universal standards in art? Well, human being all share the same basic perceptual equipment, so maybe. Come up with a few adjective to describe each of the following songs. Probably for most of us they are the same, or at least not entirely contradictory.

Komar and Melamid These Russian artists set out to find what type of painting people find most attractive. Look at the results: they are shockingly similar, although there are obvious cultural differences in terms of how art is made and so on (think about European Opera vs. Chinese Opera, baseball vs. cricket, etc…).

Art and Knowledge OK, here’s the deal. Because (as the aliens in the last lecture pointed out) art has no practical function, you might just think of it as decoration – as something that just gives pleasure. Actually, there are lots of different ways to think about how Art gives us knowledge.

Let’s consider three popular theories about how art helps us understand the world: – Art as imitation. – Art as communication. – Art as education.

Art as Imitation Mimesis (Greek for “imitation”) is the idea that the purpose of art is to copy reality. (Hamlet: a good play “should hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature.”) This idea states that the function of art is to show us the true nature of reality. This implies, at least for some, that paintings are better when they look more like real life, for example.

There are numerous problems with this idea and the criterion for art it implies. Does this mean that all photographs are better than paintings? Does it mean that figural paintings are better than abstract paintings? Also, there is the problem of the senses: why should a work of art be better when it looks like reality if I know that my human senses are flawed? Also, how do we judge music, which is not really a copy of anything?

Of course we can also claim that this idea misses the true meaning of “imitation.” Copying something does not necessarily mean to reproduce it exactly, but to interpret reality as well. Many thinkers believe that this idea is built into the definition of “mimesis.” This makes art’s function of mirroring reality more like creative interpretation of reality.

In this sense art can teach us about the world by making us look at things we think we know and showing us new things about them. Maybe a novel or a movie makes us recognize something that we have always felt, but never recognized. Even further, maybe Romeo and Juliet makes us understand love differently than we did before. Perhaps we never really thought about faces the way we did before we saw a Rembrandt portrait, etc…

The idea here is that art subtly influences the way that we experience the world. Even if none of my examples are meaningful to you, think about how the images you see, the films you watch, the music you listen to affect the way you see things.

Paradigm shift? This demonstrates an interesting idea of how art progresses. We start with something bold and avant-garde and shocking. This then becomes mainstream. Then it becomes kitsch. Examples?

Art as Communication It seems natural to think of art as a way of communicating something to the spectator. This means, of course, that there must be a language of art that we must comprehend in order to get at the message: if you try to explain why a song or a painting is good, you fail, for example.

If (as we talked about last semester) language needs to have a vocabulary and a grammar, that means that in order to really “get” a work and understand what that artist meant of art we need to understand that language. (Maybe before dismissing classical music, or country music, or modern art, or 19 th -century novels, we need to make an effort to learn the language. How can we judge these things if we do not know the “language”?

What kinds of things do the arts communicate? Well, they can communicate the whole depth and breadth of life, obviously. Art seems particularly concerned with communicating emotions. When we feel emotions deeply, many of us turn instinctively to art, because “normal” language doesn’t let us express that emotion as well. When you’re in love with someone, just saying “I love you” usually doesn’t cut it, and so we reach for a song or a poem that we feel better expresses it.

Art as Education This idea is that the arts teach us about the nature of reality, and that they teach us how to be better people. In ancient Greece, the heroes were always role models (we later get “anti-heroes”). Now we have Hollywood, and we can talk about the extent to which movies educate us about the difference between right and wrong, good and bad.

Maybe the most important way that art educates us is that it teaches us to question – it gives us a different perspective on things. In this way, art can be said to broaden our awareness, develop our empathy, sharpen our intuitions. Ex.: If, as I said above, literature gives us a sense of the variety of lives we could live, then maybe it gives us a broader conception of what it means to be human.

This flexibility of mind is HUGELY important. If we can see the world from a variety of perspectives, we can question our own (inevitable) limitations, and gain a more universal perspective on things. One of the many ways this helps us is that it lets us empathize with others. We can get the sense of what it’s like being a woman in a conformist society trying to break out of an oppressive marriage, or a black man trying to maintain his integrity in the face of racist regime, etc…

We need to talk about how we use the ways of knowing in the arts. We need to talk about what constitutes “truth” in the arts. We need to talk about having taste being forced down our throats (by oppressive regimes, by experts, by commercial culture…) We need to talk about what counts as knowledge in the arts.

What do the arts share with science/math? 1. The search for patterns. Maybe logical vs. intuitive patterns? 2. Imagination vs. reason. Of course both feature both (see Einstein and Bohr). 3. Discovered vs. invented? 4. Maybe they are compliments?

The arts and truth The Paradox of fiction: that something untrue can lead us to some of the deepest truths about ourselves and the human condition. And maybe science and math just lead us to different kids of truth than the arts do.