Philosophy Now Forum

1. It is not the case that something is not art merely because we (you, I or anybody) say it is not art.

2. We cannot say of an object “This is what I believe to be art” thinking we have avoided criticism by claiming private or personal privilege.

3. The truth is what we ought to believe. If we believe something to be the case we must also believe that is the truth and everyone ought to believe it also. If we argue that others ought not to believe what we believe then we ought not to believe it also. Therefore we must show grounds why what we believe is the truth rather than merely presenting a rationale (read excuse) for what we believe.

4. Saying that ‘Fountain’ is not art because it lacks skill or craft is not good enough.
We must show how it is the case that skill and /or craft is a necessary condition rather than merely a contingent condition for saying something is art. Anything less is merely breaking wind.

But how do we allow for personal preferences? There are works of art which I'm willing to respect as "works of art", but which bring me, personally, no aesthetic pleasure (in fact, some of them evoke aesthetic "pain"). rebecca

Hi Rebecca,

I see no problem with personal preferences. The difficulty arises when you proclaim your preferences to be art. You can like something (a personal preference) you don’t care to value as art. Works of art need not bring you or anyone ‘personal’ (is there any other kind?) aesthetic pleasure.

I would suggest that you don’t respect the work as art. Rather, you respect the activity of identifying objects as works of art and are quite prepared to accept that others are able to accomplish this feat. You defer to those others as experts though it may be the case that they know less than you about art. I like the notion of ‘aesthetic pain’ though is sounds like an oxymoron. I wonder how this differs from ‘good ol’unadulterated angst?

Reg

I take it you believe this to be true and you believe I should believe it too. Does this mean you must show grounds why you believe it is the truth?

Hi mickthinks,




Yes indeed I believe it to be the truth and you ought to believe it also. I used the term ‘ought’ and not ‘should’. You have a moral obligation to believe the truth. A survey of the art scene will produce many works hailed by philosophers, art critics and art historians to be works of art which do not obviously display skill and/or craft. Fountain seems to be one of them as does much conceptual art. There is a bit of a circular argument here for the above group tends to call some objects, which do not demonstrate skill or craft, ‘Conceptual art’ as if the lack of such a display is an identifying condition. But Action Painting is often deliberately unskillful (such as throwing blobs of paint at a canvas or painting naked women and have them roll on large sheets of paper and the paint on the paper being one work of art and the performance another) and lacking craft. There are a lot of questions and much room for doubt here and the sooner we can show those necessary conditions for describing something as art the better. Wouldn’t you agree?

Reg

I'm using "art" in a broad sense, including all the liberal arts -- in my case, music is the art form with which I'm most familiar.

With some music genres, I've developed an independent sense of discernment, and some I'll probably never respect as "art" (rap), but there's a third category which includes a few genres that I do respect as "art", but which I personally don't enjoy listening to -- I have about the same reaction to most operatic sopranos as our coon hounds....

An example of aesthetic pain: sitting with friends eagerly anticipating the chance to hear a recording of Tchaikovsky's famous Piano Concerto #1, a piece I've always LOVED, with Stanislav Richter on piano and Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. What could go wrong? That thing couldn't have played for more than 5 minutes before I snapped, literally covered my ears and ran out of the room screaming "Make it stop! Make it stop!"

BTW: I later learned that this particular recording is humorously known in classical music circles as "the conflicting concerto" -- I'm not the only one who's experienced "aesthetic pain" upon hearing it. I won't go into details here, but there were reasons why established soloists (like Richter) rarely worked with Von Karajan more than once...

Have you -- or anyone else in this thread -- ever experienced this kind of "aesthetic pain"? rebecca

Hi Rebecca,

CIA take note here is a new twist to irregular rendition.



I take it you have a music background and are informed in this art form. Can I take it that though you say you don’t enjoy listening to operatic sopranos you are still able to describe how their work is valuable? What I am getting at is that this is an example of you recognizing an art work but it gives you no aesthetic pleasure? Might it also be possible that the person sitting in front of you gains aesthetic pleasure from operatic sopranos but is unable to show how the work is valuable?



A curious example. I’m not sure if you are telling me if it was poorly interpreted or masterfully interpreted, poorly executed or expertly executed, a difficult excellent score or a difficult doubtful score? If you’ve always loved it you have obviously enjoyed it on previous occasions but this seems to have been a discordant experience. As an art work music is ephemeral so it would seem obvious that some renditions would be lesser than others. Did all listeners leave in mass or did some stay and enjoy the piece? I wonder why you feel it necessary to call your experience ‘aesthetic pain’? Are you suggesting it was pleasuarable pain or are you calling it aesthetic because you think you should have gained pleasure from it?

Reg

You ask interesting questions -- not the usual obvious ones -- I admire your style of inquiry. I'd be interested in knowing what you're discovering and what conclusions you reach. Although music is "my thing", my husband is both a musical and visual artist, so he's also interested in your research.

The aesthetic pain I experienced was like a dozen screech owls screaming at volume 10 inside my head. The cause was hearing a musical work I loved, and still do, being so badly butchered that it was too painful to listen to. Yet, interestingly, no one else in the room heard the problem. Later at home, I asked my husband to listen to my 1932 recording of that same marvelous work, a brilliant performance (the best I've ever heard) of it, and my husband did clearly hear the difference and understood why I'd had to leave the room earlier that evening.

This hypersensitivity to music is a reflexive reaction, it can be positive or negative, it's not learned, and it's not something easily controlled. It's just the way I'm wired. And I've read about other music lovers who seem to share a similar peculiarity.

For example, a couple of years ago I was exploring music on the internet and heard a traditional music sound so unique and exquisite that, for the first time in all my life, I had a kind of petit mal seizure and fell right down to the floor. Later that week, researching this unique style of music, I found an article by an ethnomusicologist describing his first hearing of it "like a lemon spike being driven into my brain". It was for him, as it was for me, an extremely pleasurable experience. There must really be something special about this particular traditional music, as it's been rapidly gaining a worldwide following like someone just introduced the taste of chocolate to the traditional music world.

The history of the "very bad" concerto recording was interesting to me. I read (later) that the conductor (Von Karajan) of the orchestra in this "godawful" version of the concerto, while famous and extremely prolific (there was no work of classical music too great a challenge for his ego), had developed a bad reputation among world-class musicians, the artists who actually play the instruments. Interestingly, reviews from music critics were divided, and for that I have no explanation -- some described him as brilliant?

The particular bad performance I heard was nicknamed, by musicians, "the conflicting concerto" because the very gifted solo pianist, Stanislav Richter, was "duking it out" with conductor Von Karajan's orchestra all the way through. I did later get this recording off Youtube, and listened to it in small increments (as much as I could stand at one sitting), and I could hear Van Karajan with his orchestra and Richter on the piano fighting for control, adjusting and readjusting the tempo, the dynamics, just stepping all over each other. Since the concerto (solo artist plus orchestra) traditionally yields to the solo artist's interpretation (particularly one of Richter's caliber), Von Karajan's conducting was, IMO, inexcusable.

On the other hand, I have brilliant recordings of concertos where the orchestra conductor not only respects but seems able to really "get" the solo artist's feel for the work, to understand what the solo artist is hearing, where he is going -- and the orchestra conductor is then able to combine his orchestra with the solo artist in a nearly perfect interwoven tapestry of music, and oh my god, tears are coming to my eyes right now as I recall one of those pieces. That, IMO, represents the pinnacle of great conducting.

Von Karajan had, and still has posthumously, a large cultish fan base who consider him "the greatest conductor who ever lived". But when I read their accolades to better understand why they liked this guy, they mostly described his striking Teutonic appearance, his grandstanding antics on the podium, his "flying hair" and "violently waving arms" and "screaming at the orchestra" and "sweat pouring down his face" and other signs of his "obvious passion", etc. -- I'm not convinced that all of his fans were really hearing the music, or had ever heard another conductor's interpretation. But I could be wrong. Maybe it's just a personal preference thing, eh?

Can't really answer questions about opera -- I'm so unfamiliar with that genre. I've read, as I'm sure you have, about the natural talent, extensive training and sacrifices required to "make it" in the world of opera. I know one amateur opera tenor who can readily hear the finesse in performances that all sound the same to me -- but once he describes the differences to me, and I listen carefully, sometimes I kind-of understand what he's hearing.

I tend to give weight to the artistic judgments of people who are artists themselves -- I've noticed that they seem more in agreement with each other about the quality and merit of a performance, whereas professional critics are so often divided, and while some seem to have a gifted ear, others seem to be either competing with each other or cronying up to some sycophant or playing some other kind of ego power game, have you noticed?

Well, enough blabbering from me. Please post some of your findings and opinions, and not just from the world of music. rebecca

Hi, critic. I'm melonkali's husband. I try to keep it simple in evaluating art. If it doesn't deliver some kind of aesthetic pleasure, it's not art. Technique only serves the purpose of achieving this goal. When technique becomes its own end, it's not art. Of course, the skill and ability which some technique may display--a very difficult and demanding musical score or a form of art design that requires extreme precision in its construction--is to be admired for the talent it requires, but the end work will only be considered good and pleasing if it brings a positive aesthetic response. So you see, I most treasure the vision of the artist, the composer, the performer; not their technical skills.

My wife and I were once browsing some art work on the internet, and came upon a canvas painted blue, with little or no variance in hue or tint to suggest any content. This painting was sold for $6 million! I was extremely impressed by the work...the work of the conman who convinced some overly wealthy idiots that this piece of trash was worth even $6 much less six million dollars. I was taught to evaluate art by the skills common to the classical artists, balance and flow, color and perspective, simple skills that can be found in a great variety on a canvas. The sculptures of Michaelangelo and Rodin have conveyed much beauty to me, beauty...and sorrow, defeat, valor, and other emotional triggers. If my son had presented the blue canvas to me, I would have slapped him on his hand for wasting a good piece of canvas.

Impressionism has never been problematic for me. I have to struggle with some cubism, and it certainly is not generally "my cup of tea". But generally, I can look for the same basic features in any visual art. It's not sophisticated, but it's all I have to go by.

Bran th' Blessed

Hi Rebecca.


I hear you loud and clear. Chomsky suggests we are hard wired for language. I see no reason why some of us cannot be hard wired for music. Your ability is also your burden. Music is an interesting art form in this respect. There are some researchers who suggest that humming was some kind of protolanguage and of course there are a number of savants and child prodigies on record. Could it be that music was our first art form? The next question is if this was the case why did early Homo sapiens bother with drawing on cave walls?


A lemon spike, huh? Not an orange spike or an apple spike. Perhaps I am missing the metaphor. I know about sour grapes. I take it the experience had a tinge of tartness which seasoned the work in some way and indeed we get pleasure from a judicial amount of acidic taste. Pleasure for you seems to be a necessary condition for art.


It seems you offer your respect though your pleasure with it is either missing or incomplete. What interest me is your emphasis on ‘finesse in performance’, ‘natural talent’ and ‘extensive training and sacrifices’ required to be a successful artist. These seem to me to be technical aspects of the work of art and they also seem to be necessary so my next question is: If opera has these components and you receive no pleasure from it is it an art form that produces works of art? What I am trying to get at is can we recognize something as a work of art, know what is entailed in its completion but receive no pleasure from it? I’ll move on to Bran as he is somewhat more adamant with his views.

Reg

Hi Bran, I wonder if I can get you to think outside the box?


There are a number of conclusions we may justifiably draw from this spiel and the most obvious one is that you hold that there is no such a thing as bad art. All works of art are good by definition. ‘Good’ meaning it delivers aesthetic pleasure. Let’s look at this notion of aesthetic pleasure. Initially, the term ‘aesthetic’ entailed pleasure. The search for the aesthetic was a search for pleasure. So the term ‘aesthetic pleasure’ is a pleonasm. Some sunsets are described as aesthetic as a result of delivering pleasure to some people. But these are not works of art so how do works of art differ? Pleasure cannot be the only criterion. Cannot works of art be deliberately made so as to not give pleasure? Cannot this be the vision of the artist?


If we define a ‘positive aesthetic response’ as ‘good and pleasing’ what have you actually said? You have said the end work will only be valued if it brings a positive aesthetic response. Wow this is confusing. Are we measuring the quality of the response or the quality of the work? Is it the case that a quality work only delivers a quality response? Cannot a work of poor quality work deliver a quality response to some people? Some people swear that soap operas are the best thing since sliced bread. They are technically sound but the scripts are banal which seems to limit the performances of the actors. As they say, all froth and no substance. The vision of the artists – Director and script writer- is created to appeal to the lowest learneď dominator of society. They treasure the vision of these two collaborators. So, are soap operas art?


I don’t think I have seen the work you speak of but I have seen similar works. Ives Kline had chemists develop a new kind of blue that maintains its color both wet and dry. I imagine he would like to experiment with it. Is this not a valuable way of producing art? Could not an artist’s vision be recognized (by the artist) after the work was created? Do we always have to know what we are doing when painting a work?


It seems here that pleasure is not the only criterion for you. Now let me ask a question. If you looked at a work that you believed to be skillfully executed and that gave you pleasure would you call it a work of art if at a later date you were informed that it was created by a machine?

Reg

I don't know, Critic. I do know that I am not a sophisticated aesthete, as is obvious I think from my first post. I will restrict my discussion here to man-made works of art, but preface that by saying that the beauty and majesty of nature are such art as inspire man to paint and write and compose and sculpt. Furthermore, if a machine can make such art as a man makes, then it must be designed and programmed by a man to do so. If the result is worthy of praise to any extent, I praise both the machine and those who enabled it. (It occurs to me that we might praise whatever God we might believe in for such artists as Renoir or Michelangelo. )

All I know is what appeals to me, what pleases me, what touches me. I am a musician and singer, and music has always been able to touch my heart more deeply than visual art (painting and sculpture). There are any number of musical pieces that bring rapturous tears to my eyes upon hearing them, and they are not all perfect musical pieces by any means.

One example is "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" as performed by the Russian Red Army Chorus. They are performing a concert with a rock & roll group called the Leningrad Cowboys who march about on stage during the performance in their Elvis Presley clown uniforms rather to the distraction of the performance.

I have heard other groups perform what sounds like the same arrangement of this song (Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Navy Chorus), and they have left me unmoved. The Red Army performance, in spite of the distractions and the pronunciation difficulties--lie-lees instead of lih-lees, etc.--invariably brings me to tears, usually by the first verse, and God help me with the ending! I can't analyze why it touches me. The mind cannot fathom what the heart is feeling. I am aware of a sense of the nobility of the human spirit, of the inhumanity of cruelty and oppression and the courage and sacrifice of those who stand boldly, and even die, in the resistance against such evil.

Glory Hallelujah

I'm sorry I can't define what incorporates the artistic and aesthetic components of this performance. Perhaps you can get me started, if it's not just trash to you.

Bran

Hi Bran, Welcome to the monkey house.

I have no problem with someone saying I don’t know anything about art but I know what I like. But you don’t quite fit into that category. Nor do I and I have been known to cry while watching some very trashy movies; movies that I know are woeful in terms of script and direction and so obviously contrived. My wife usually moves a few seats over when I start bawling. She says she can’t stand to see a grown man cry. I have been told by some people I have met that they wept while viewing a painting. I don’t know if it was because it was a good painting or a bad painting. I guess we never grow out of those childhood sensitivities and a readiness to identify with a sad occasion like when we fear that Lassie won’t come home. Of course the music helps. It tells us that the occasion is sad or playful or that we should rejoice and we are expected to respond in kind. I’m thinking that Chinese or Japanese music has its sad and playful bits (I’m thinking of Noh theatre here). Though I’ve heard a bit of it, it doesn’t tug at my heart strings which leads me to think that it is not the film or music that affects us so much as what we bring to it.


This is surely an intellectual process. Do you get emotional when considering this? I know that my emotional behavior at the movies is maudlin tripe. Patriotism is often like this. Watch the winners of gold medals at the Olympics when their anthem is played. Crass sentimentality (I did it; I did it against insurmountable odds while the coach stood boldly by. Mom will be proud.). I favor the ones who have obviously forgotten the words to their anthem. They seldom cry. They’re too busy trying to mouth what everyone else is singing only they’re always a little bit late. There’s a slight tinge of panic in their eyes. How much sentimentality did you bring to the Red Army performance? And if their manager should say to you: “You should hear them when they haven’t been drinking. That’s when they are really good!”




This is interesting; man is the measure of all things. How do you feel about the case of Marla Olmstead, the three year old girl who was hailed as an infant Jackson Pollock? Her very large paintings sold for many thousands of dollars but when Sixty Minutes did a story on her it was revealed that her father offered her suggestions while she was painting. Consequently the value (read price) of her paintings dropped considerably. If you can accept a man-made machine making art can you accept a man giving suggestions to a child painter as a way to make art? I’m sure it is not unusual that artists give each other suggestions. I suppose it tells us something about why people bought Marla’s paintings in the first place. I mention this to get to my next question. I was in Thailand once and watched elephants paint. Though the elephants did all the work they were given vocal signals by their keepers. Is this any different to the Marla Olmstead example? One of God’s great creatures paints wonderful works guided by one of God’s uncommitted folk. Did the elephant or did the trainer make the work of art? Does it matter? Are you prepared to call the painting a work of art?

Reg

Reg, I doubt that the product of an elephant's painting, even if directed skillfully by Cezanne, would greatly impress me (but who knows). Perhaps I should imagine that these elephant trainers are the artists, and they have chosen to paint using a very difficult and somewhat dangerous technique that we may call "Postulum Elephantis". Do I then have more respect for the work, when the elephant is only an animated brush? No. I only want to view the final product and evaluate it on its own merits, its appeal to me, the value of its message as I perceive it. I don't care so much how it came to be as I care about what it is. Painted by a little girl? With help from papa? And his trained elephant, Doris? None of that matters as much as the work itself, in whole and in all its parts.

I appreciate your kind response to my earlier post, and the humor you included. My wife and I have our own little POV on movies that we both like. Gosford Park may make a number of lists as a good movie, but we also think that Evita is the best musical ever made (directed by Alan Parker), and we really liked an intentionally silly movie called The Country Bears, which had good country rock music and an excellent dry humor to it. De gustibus non ad est disputandum! (as nearly as I can recall)

On that Red Army Chorus, I really think there is something in the sound itself--the blend of the voices and the music, the control and power. I feel like you could take any one note, any one syllable of text, and play it for me, and I would be affected by it almost as deeply. And truly, there may be more sentimentality than I recognize in it; for I can't point to this factor or that factor as an explanation (subjective or objective) for its affect or effect.

Bran / Samm

Thanks, Bran.

We’ve let our hair down and had a bit of fun. Let’s see what we can glean from our conversation. I think you would agree that there is nothing wrong with taking delight in the not so brilliant examples of an art form we encounter. AND for the most part our delight is particular to ourselves. Others need not (and many do not) take delight in that which tickles our fancy. Would you agree that we can designate a movie such as The Country Bears an example of an art form? By the same token would not a painting by an elephant (however woeful) be considered an example of an art form?

On the other hand you have stressed in a couple of different ways:


What I want to suggest to you is that in viewing the final product, its appeal to you is not a ‘merit’ of the painting. Rather it is a symptom of your evaluation. How you feel about (or your appreciation of) a work is not a property of the work. You are an informed artist and what matters are the whole and all its parts:



Style and technique as it affects the whole seems to be a prominent concern of your evaluation as it is for most professionals. I think most who read this thread realize why mere technical skill is not enough. It seldom offers us anything new. Rodin, Cezanne, Michelangelo, Monet, Pollock and those we hail as masters were all innovators. Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase and Fountain, and Elephant art are innovations and each has merit as a result. Now I want to refer you to your first post.


Here you seem to be using the term ‘art’ as a value term rather than a descriptive one. What I mean by this is that sometimes we use the term art to designate a category and sometimes we use it to signal our approval of a particular work as when looking at a painting we say: “Now that’s what I call art! (Implying merit) Most of us use categories to help us sort out our thinking processes. Even ‘things that go bump in the night’ make up a category. So it is not unusual that we should include works that don’t ‘deliver some kind of aesthetic pleasure’, or works where ‘technique only serves the purpose of achieving some goal or when technique becomes its own end’ in the category we call ‘art’ without committing ourselves to a statement about their merit. I think you can appreciate this. I find it difficult to argue that we should use the term ‘art’ exclusively as a value term when there are other ways to show the value of a work.

Reg