Emotions and Art

Tolstoy talks about how art must move people in an emotional way in order for it to truly be art, and successful art. My problem with this is how many people does it have to "move" for it to actually be art?

Can it just be one person, or a group of people? Does it have to be a large group? Does it have to be displayed as art in order for it to fully serve its purpose?

There are a lot of faults in this theory, as discussed in class, and a lot of holes in the theory as well.

Also, I am curious to what Tolstoy would say if a piece of artwork, whatever kind of art it may be, affected someone emotionally, but not in the intended way. Would it still be considered art? Or failed art? Or is it just not art to that specific person?

Cooking and Art

Something I have always wondered was whether cooking was considered an art form, or just the way it is displayed? Many call cooking "the art of cooking", but when art is talked about, cooking is rarely mentioned. 

My thoughts are it is the process to get to a final art form. So cooking itself may not be art, but the final product is. Just like painting is not art necessarily, but the final picture is.

What do you guys think though?

Is this art?

Or is this?

Response to Brycen

Brycen asked on his blog:

Will a clear cut line ever be drawn on what is art and what is not; without regard to aesthetics, or will works of art just become more and more ridiculous and simplistic as time goes on?

I don't think a clear line can every be drawn; what can be hopefully defined is what categories to include. The biggest one is it has to be man-made, and usually with the intention of art. 

Brycen used an example of a man gathering a bunch of sticks from a tree, dropping them on the floor and calling that art, as a way to exemplify how ridiculous art can be sometimes. 

If we take the general definition of art, however, than this intention will in fact be art. This brings us back to the question of whether or not opinion of observers makes something art or not. I don't think that this can ever be the case simply because there are too many opinions in the world to make a concrete decision such as this.

And so Brycen, I don't think art will ever be truly defined, unfortunately, as long as there are the millions of different opinions in the world.

My question to you though is: is this really such a bad thing?

Immitation

The topic this week has been imitation being the basis for art. To me, it makes sense that art, at least in paintings or sculptures, is an imitation of something. However, does this mean that everything imitated is art? Does that mean mocking someone can be considered an art form? And what of music? What is music imitating?

It was said that art is an imitation of an imitation of an idea or a "form". Where do these ideas and "forms" come from, though? This may be a lot of questions to ask at one time, but sometimes asking questions is more important than making statements; questioning is more important than acceptance.

I understand Plato's reasoning on imitation, but as Alex was saying in class, I believe that not all art forms are an imitation of an imitation, but the imitation of the idea. I think is is especially true when it comes to music, because I believe music is more an expression of emotion than anything, and even if it is imitating emotion, that emotion is the original form.

Maybe Plato's thinkings and ideas are more prudent to his time and less relevant to ours?

Good vs. Bad

In class we touched on the subject of mastery, skill level, and good vs. bad art.

Some argued that if one masters a certain aspect of art, then they are "good" at it, whereas a child or someone with less skills creates "bad" art.

I don't think that art can ever be good or bad. Art is simply art. That is why I do not understand the reason many people go to school for art. It is one thing to gain more skill and to learn different techniques, but I don't think that learning these things makes you any better of an artist; it just means you know things you didn't use to. It's like taking classes on drawing where you are taught how to draw, but in their style not yours.

Does knowing different techniques make you a "better" artist, or just more skillful?

Responding to Kim

Kim posed this question the other day, and it intrigued me:

When determining what is art, would the views of the creator or the viewer be more important? 

I liked this question a lot, Kim, and I think one could go so many places with it. However, I am going to give my opinion as an answer.

First, I believe that it is certainly the intent of the creator that makes something art. It is not the audience's position to determine if one thing is art and another is not. The biggest example I can think of is why on earth do we put ancient pots and other such artifacts into art museums!? These were not created with the intent of being art, but simply with utilitarian usage; it doesn't matter if they were painted all pretty and such, they were not meant to be displayed as works of art. I understand why they would be put into history museums, but not art. 

It would be like putting one of the tables from the townhouse living rooms in a museum...why!? They are just there to be used, not displayed. Or even better, it would be like displaying a display case...what the heck is the point of that?

Anyways, sorry for the little rant. Basically, it goes back to the discussion we were having in class, just because something is beautiful, doesn't mean it's art.

After day one...

So the purpose of this blog is to think and write about thought provoking ideas that I have in class and to continue the discussion outside of the classroom.


So to start off with, we only discussed part of the introduction for class. The main question was how can we look at art philosophically? Anyways, it turned into more of a discussion about aesthetics and such. I was not terribly into this part of the discussion, more off in my own world thinking about art itself and how can things be art.

Art is obviously changing and so is the definition, if there even is one for art. What is art? No one really knows. I say it's a purposeful expression of...something? Maybe? Who knows. The discussion in class was not focusing on anything in particular, other than aesthetics for a while and trying to determine what that even means.

Something I really wanted to delve into though, and tried but was unsuccessful was the fact that to look at art philosophically is not to determine what art is; instead it is a matter of looking at how others see and define art. Philosophy is not about defining things, it is about determining how others look at things and how it affects their lives. Therefore to try and define art in our class seems very against the whole premise of philosophy and its ideals.

A final question I will leave you with is: why are we on such a mission to define art?