This Chapter Examines the Different Ways in Which Spirituality Can Be Expressed in Art For Example
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Question of the Month
What is Fine art? and/or What is Beauty?
The post-obit answers to this artful question each win a random volume.
Fine art is something we do, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, but it is even more personal than that: it's about sharing the way we experience the world, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the communication of intimate concepts that cannot exist faithfully portrayed by words solitary. And considering words lonely are not enough, we must find some other vehicle to carry our intent. But the content that we instill on or in our chosen media is non in itself the art. Art is to exist found in how the media is used, the way in which the content is expressed.
What then is beauty? Dazzler is much more than cosmetic: it is non about prettiness. In that location are plenty of pretty pictures available at the neighborhood home furnishing store; but these we might non refer to as beautiful; and it is non difficult to find works of artistic expression that nosotros might agree are beautiful that are not necessarily pretty. Beauty is rather a measure of touch on, a measure of emotion. In the context of art, dazzler is the approximate of successful communication between participants – the conveyance of a concept between the artist and the perceiver. Cute art is successful in portraying the artist's near profound intended emotions, the desired concepts, whether they be pretty and bright, or dark and sinister. But neither the artist nor the observer can be certain of successful communication in the terminate. And so dazzler in fine art is eternally subjective.
Wm. Joseph Nieters, Lake Ozark, Missouri
Works of art may elicit a sense of wonder or cynicism, hope or despair, adoration or spite; the piece of work of fine art may be direct or complex, subtle or explicit, intelligible or obscure; and the subjects and approaches to the creation of fine art are bounded just past the imagination of the artist. Consequently, I believe that defining art based upon its content is a doomed enterprise.
Now a theme in aesthetics, the study of art, is the claim that there is a detachment or distance between works of art and the menstruum of everyday life. Thus, works of fine art rise similar islands from a current of more pragmatic concerns. When you step out of a river and onto an island, yous've reached your destination. Similarly, the aesthetic attitude requires you to treat creative feel every bit an end-in-itself: art asks the states to arrive empty of preconceptions and attend to the way in which we experience the work of art. And although a person can accept an 'aesthetic feel' of a natural scene, flavour or texture, art is different in that it is produced. Therefore, art is the intentional communication of an feel equally an end-in-itself. The content of that experience in its cultural context may determine whether the artwork is popular or ridiculed, significant or little, only it is art either mode.
One of the initial reactions to this approach may be that it seems overly broad. An older brother who sneaks up backside his younger sibling and shouts "Booo!" tin can be said to be creating fine art. But isn't the divergence between this and a Freddy Krueger movie simply one of degree? On the other manus, my definition would exclude graphics used in advertising or political propaganda, equally they are created as a means to an finish and not for their ain sakes. Furthermore, 'communication' is not the best word for what I accept in mind because information technology implies an unwarranted intention virtually the content represented. Aesthetic responses are often underdetermined by the creative person's intentions.
Mike Mallory, Everett, WA
The key departure between fine art and beauty is that art is about who has produced it, whereas beauty depends on who'south looking.
Of course there are standards of dazzler – that which is seen as 'traditionally' beautiful. The game changers – the square pegs, and then to speak – are those who saw traditional standards of beauty and decided specifically to go against them, mayhap just to prove a bespeak. Take Picasso, Munch, Schoenberg, to proper noun just three. They have made a stand against these norms in their art. Otherwise their art is like all other fine art: its simply part is to exist experienced, appraised, and understood (or not).
Art is a ways to state an stance or a feeling, or else to create a different view of the earth, whether it be inspired by the piece of work of other people or something invented that'south entirely new. Dazzler is whatever aspect of that or annihilation else that makes an individual feel positive or grateful. Beauty alone is not art, but art can be made of, nearly or for cute things. Beauty tin can be plant in a snowy mountain scene: art is the photograph of it shown to family, the oil estimation of it hung in a gallery, or the music score recreating the scene in crotchets and quavers.
However, art is not necessarily positive: information technology tin can be deliberately hurtful or displeasing: it can brand you think near or consider things that you would rather not. Just if information technology evokes an emotion in yous, and then it is art.
Chiara Leonardi, Reading, Berks
Art is a mode of grasping the world. Non just the physical world, which is what scientific discipline attempts to do; merely the whole world, and specifically, the human world, the earth of club and spiritual experience.
Fine art emerged around fifty,000 years ago, long earlier cities and civilisation, yet in forms to which nosotros can nonetheless direct relate. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves, which so startled Picasso, take been carbon-dated at around 17,000 years old. At present, following the invention of photography and the devastating attack fabricated past Duchamp on the self-appointed Art Establishment [run into Cursory Lives this result], art cannot be merely defined on the basis of concrete tests like 'fidelity of representation' or vague abstract concepts like 'beauty'. And then how can nosotros define fine art in terms applying to both cave-dwellers and mod city sophisticates? To do this nosotros need to ask: What does art do? And the answer is surely that it provokes an emotional, rather than a simply cognitive response. Ane way of approaching the problem of defining art, then, could be to say: Art consists of shareable ideas that have a shareable emotional bear on. Art need not produce beautiful objects or events, since a great piece of art could validly arouse emotions other than those aroused by dazzler, such equally terror, anxiety, or laughter. Yet to derive an acceptable philosophical theory of art from this agreement ways tackling the concept of 'emotion' head on, and philosophers have been notoriously reluctant to do this. Just non all of them: Robert Solomon's book The Passions (1993) has made an excellent start, and this seems to me to exist the mode to get.
Information technology won't be piece of cake. Poor sometime Richard Rorty was jumped on from a very great height when all he said was that literature, poetry, patriotism, love and stuff like that were philosophically important. Fine art is vitally important to maintaining broad standards in civilisation. Its pedigree long predates philosophy, which is merely 3,000 years onetime, and scientific discipline, which is a mere 500 years old. Art deserves much more attention from philosophers.
Alistair MacFarlane, Gwynedd
Some years ago I went looking for art. To brainstorm my journey I went to an fine art gallery. At that stage art to me was whatever I found in an art gallery. I found paintings, mostly, and considering they were in the gallery I recognised them as art. A detail Rothko painting was one colour and large. I observed a farther slice that did non have an obvious characterization. Information technology was also of one colour – white – and gigantically big, occupying i complete wall of the very loftier and spacious room and standing on small roller wheels. On closer inspection I saw that it was a moveable wall, non a piece of art. Why could i work exist considered 'art' and the other not?
The answer to the question could, perhaps, be constitute in the criteria of Berys Gaut to decide if some artefact is, indeed, art – that art pieces function only as pieces of art, just as their creators intended.
But were they beautiful? Did they evoke an emotional response in me? Beauty is frequently associated with fine art. There is sometimes an expectation of encountering a 'beautiful' object when going to come across a work of fine art, be information technology painting, sculpture, book or functioning. Of grade, that expectation speedily changes as one widens the range of installations encountered. The classic case is Duchamp's Fountain (1917), a rather un-beautiful urinal.
Tin can nosotros ascertain beauty? Permit me attempt past suggesting that beauty is the capacity of an artefact to evoke a pleasurable emotional response. This might exist categorised as the 'like' response.
I definitely did not like Fountain at the initial level of appreciation. At that place was skill, of course, in its structure. But what was the skill in its presentation as art?
So I began to achieve a definition of art. A work of art is that which asks a question which a non-fine art object such as a wall does non: What am I? What am I communicating? The responses, both of the creator creative person and of the recipient audience, vary, merely they invariably involve a judgement, a response to the invitation to answer. The respond, as well, goes towards deciphering that deeper question – the 'Who am I?' which goes towards defining humanity.
Neil Hallinan, Maynooth, Co. Kildare
'Art' is where nosotros brand meaning beyond language. Fine art consists in the making of pregnant through intelligent agency, eliciting an aesthetic response. Information technology's a means of communication where language is not sufficient to explicate or draw its content. Art can render visible and known what was previously unspoken. Because what fine art expresses and evokes is in part ineffable, we observe it difficult to define and delineate it. It is known through the feel of the audience as well as the intention and expression of the artist. The meaning is made by all the participants, and then tin can never be fully known. It is multifarious and on-going. Even a disagreement is a tension which is itself an expression of something.
Fine art drives the development of a civilization, both supporting the establishment and also preventing destructive letters from being silenced – fine art leads, mirrors and reveals modify in politics and morality. Art plays a central part in the creation of culture, and is an outpouring of idea and ideas from information technology, and so information technology cannot be fully understood in isolation from its context. Paradoxically, however, art can communicate beyond language and time, highly-seasoned to our mutual humanity and linking disparate communities. Perhaps if wider audiences engaged with a greater variety of the world's creative traditions it could engender increased tolerance and mutual respect.
Another inescapable facet of fine art is that information technology is a commodity. This fact feeds the creative procedure, whether motivating the artist to course an item of monetary value, or to avoid creating 1, or to artistically commodify the aesthetic feel. The commodification of art also affects who is considered qualified to create art, comment on it, and fifty-fifty define it, as those who benefit most strive to keep the value of 'art objects' high. These influences must feed into a civilization's understanding of what art is at any time, making thoughts about art culturally dependent. Even so, this commodification and the consequent closely-guarded function of the fine art critic also gives rise to a counter civilisation within art culture, often expressed through the creation of art that cannot be sold. The stratification of art by value and the resultant tension too adds to its meaning, and the meaning of fine art to society.
Catherine Bosley, Monk Soham, Suffolk
First of all we must recognize the obvious. 'Fine art' is a word, and words and concepts are organic and modify their significant through time. And so in the olden days, fine art meant craft. It was something you could excel at through practise and hard work. You learnt how to paint or sculpt, and you lot learnt the special symbolism of your era. Through Romanticism and the birth of individualism, art came to hateful originality. To do something new and never-heard-of defined the artist. His or her personality became substantially every bit of import every bit the artwork itself. During the era of Modernism, the search for originality led artists to reevaluate art. What could art practise? What could it represent? Could y'all paint movement (Cubism, Futurism)? Could you pigment the non-material (Abstruse Expressionism)? Fundamentally: could annihilation be regarded as art? A style of trying to solve this problem was to look beyond the piece of work itself, and focus on the art world: art was that which the institution of art – artists, critics, art historians, etc – was prepared to regard as art, and which was fabricated public through the establishment, e.g. galleries. That'southward Institutionalism – made famous through Marcel Duchamp's gear up-mades.
Institutionalism has been the prevailing notion through the afterwards part of the twentieth century, at least in academia, and I would say it nevertheless holds a firm grip on our conceptions. One example is the Swedish artist Anna Odell. Her motion-picture show sequence Unknown woman 2009-349701, for which she faked psychosis to be admitted to a psychiatric infirmary, was widely debated, and by many was not regarded equally art. But because it was debated by the art world, it succeeded in breaking into the art globe, and is today regarded as art, and Odell is regarded an creative person.
Of course there are those who endeavor and interruption out of this hegemony, for example by refusing to play by the art world's unwritten rules. Andy Warhol with his Factory was one, fifty-fifty though he is today totally embraced past the art world. Another instance is Damien Hirst, who, much similar Warhol, pays people to create the physical manifestations of his ideas. He doesn't use galleries and other art world-approved arenas to advertise, and instead sells his objects directly to private individuals. This liberal arroyo to capitalism is one way of attacking the hegemony of the art earth.
What does all this teach us about fine art? Probably that art is a fleeting and chimeric concept. We will always have fine art, only for the most part we will simply really learn in retrospect what the art of our era was.
Tommy Törnsten, Linköping, Sweden
Art periods such as Classical, Byzantine, neo-Classical, Romantic, Mod and mail service-Modernistic reflect the irresolute nature of fine art in social and cultural contexts; and shifting values are evident in varying content, forms and styles. These changes are encompassed, more or less in sequence, by Imitationalist, Emotionalist, Expressivist, Formalist and Institutionalist theories of fine art. In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), Arthur Danto claims a distinctiveness for art that inextricably links its instances with acts of observation, without which all that could exist are 'cloth counterparts' or 'mere real things' rather than artworks. Notwithstanding the competing theories, works of art can be seen to possess 'family resemblances' or 'strands of resemblance' linking very different instances every bit art. Identifying instances of art is relatively straightforward, but a definition of fine art that includes all possible cases is elusive. Consequently, art has been claimed to be an 'open' concept.
According to Raymond Williams' Keywords (1976), capitalised 'Fine art' appears in general utilise in the nineteenth century, with 'Fine Art'; whereas 'art' has a history of previous applications, such as in music, poetry, comedy, tragedy and trip the light fantastic toe; and we should too mention literature, media arts, even gardening, which for David Cooper in A Philosophy of Gardens (2006) can provide "epiphanies of co-dependence". Fine art, then, is perchance "anything presented for our aesthetic contemplation" – a phrase coined past John Davies, erstwhile tutor at the School of Fine art Pedagogy, Birmingham, in 1971 – although 'annihilation' may seem too inclusive. Gaining our aesthetic involvement is at least a necessary requirement of art. Sufficiency for something to be fine art requires significance to fine art appreciators which endures as long as tokens or types of the artwork persist. Paradoxically, such significance is sometimes attributed to objects neither intended every bit art, nor especially intended to be perceived aesthetically – for example, votive, devotional, commemorative or utilitarian artefacts. Furthermore, aesthetic interests tin can be eclipsed by dubious investment practices and social kudos. When combined with celebrity and harmful forms of narcissism, they can egregiously affect creative actuality. These interests can be overriding, and spawn products masquerading equally fine art. So it's upward to discerning observers to spot any Fads, Fakes and Fantasies (Sjoerd Hannema, 1970).
Colin Brookes, Loughborough, Leicestershire
For me art is nada more and nothing less than the creative ability of individuals to express their understanding of some aspect of private or public life, like beloved, conflict, fear, or pain. As I read a war poem by Edward Thomas, relish a Mozart piano concerto, or contemplate a M.C. Escher drawing, I am often emotionally inspired by the moment and intellectually stimulated by the thought-process that follows. At this moment of discovery I humbly realize my views may be those shared past thousands, even millions beyond the world. This is due in large office to the mass media's power to control and exploit our emotions. The commercial success of a performance or production becomes the metric by which art is at present well-nigh exclusively gauged: quality in art has been sadly reduced to equating great fine art with sale of books, number of views, or the downloading of recordings. Too bad if personal sensibilities about a detail piece of art are lost in the greater rush for immediate credence.
So where does that get out the subjective notion that dazzler can however exist plant in art? If beauty is the result of a process by which art gives pleasance to our senses, then it should remain a affair of personal discernment, fifty-fifty if outside forces clamour to take control of it. In other words, nobody, including the art critic, should be able to tell the private what is cute and what is non. The globe of art is one of a constant tension between preserving private tastes and promoting pop acceptance.
Ian Malcomson, Victoria, British Columbia
What nosotros perceive every bit beautiful does non offend u.s. on any level. It is a personal judgement, a subjective opinion. A retentiveness from once we gazed upon something beautiful, a sight ever and so pleasing to the senses or to the heart, oft time stays with us forever. I shall never forget walking into Balzac's house in France: the odor of lilies was so overwhelming that I had a numinous moment. The intensity of the emotion evoked may non exist possible to explicate. I don't feel it'southward of import to contend why I think a flower, painting, sunset or how the calorie-free streaming through a stained-glass window is beautiful. The ability of the sights create an emotional reaction in me. I don't expect or concern myself that others will agree with me or not. Tin all agree that an act of kindness is beautiful?
A thing of beauty is a whole; elements coming together making it so. A single castor stroke of a painting does not alone create the impact of beauty, but all together, it becomes beautiful. A perfect flower is cute, when all of the petals together form its perfection; a pleasant, exhilarant scent is also function of the beauty.
In thinking near the question, 'What is beauty?', I've merely come up abroad with the idea that I am the beholder whose eye it is in. Suffice it to say, my private assessment of what strikes me as beautiful is all I need to know.
Cheryl Anderson, Kenilworth, Illinois
Stendhal said, "Beauty is the promise of happiness", but this didn't get to the heart of the matter. Whose beauty are we talking well-nigh? Whose happiness?
Consider if a snake made art. What would information technology believe to be beautiful? What would it deign to brand? Snakes have poor eyesight and detect the world largely through a chemosensory organ, the Jacobson'south organ, or through heat-sensing pits. Would a movie in its human form even brand sense to a snake? So their art, their beauty, would be entirely conflicting to ours: it would not be visual, and even if they had songs they would be foreign; afterward all, snakes practice non take ears, they sense vibrations. So fine art would be sensed, and songs would be felt, if it is even possible to conceive that idea.
From this perspective – a view depression to the footing – we can see that dazzler is truly in the center of the beholder. It may cross our lips to speak of the nature of beauty in billowy language, but we do so entirely with a forked tongue if nosotros do then seriously. The aesthetics of representing dazzler ought not to fool us into thinking beauty, as some abstruse concept, truly exists. It requires a viewer and a context, and the value we place on certain combinations of colors or sounds over others speaks of zippo more than preference. Our desire for pictures, moving or otherwise, is because our organs developed in such a way. A snake would accept no utilise for the visual earth.
I am thankful to have human being art over serpent art, but I would no doubt be amazed at serpentine fine art. It would crave an intellectual sloughing of many conceptions we take for granted. For that, considering the possibility of this extreme thought is worthwhile: if snakes could write poetry, what would it be?
Derek Halm, Portland, Oregon
[A: Sssibilance and sussssuration – Ed.]
The questions, 'What is art?' and 'What is beauty?' are dissimilar types and shouldn't be conflated.
With boring predictability, virtually all contemporary discussers of art lapse into a 'relative-off', whereby they go to annoying lengths to demonstrate how open-minded they are and how ineluctably loose the concept of art is. If fine art is just whatever you want information technology to be, can we non merely end the conversation at that place? Information technology's a washed bargain. I'll throw playdough on to a canvas, and nosotros can pretend to display our modern credentials of acceptance and insight. This just doesn't work, and nosotros all know it. If art is to mean anything, there has to be some working definition of what it is. If art can be annihilation to anybody at someday, then at that place ends the discussion. What makes art special – and worth discussing – is that it stands to a higher place or outside everyday things, such as everyday food, paintwork, or sounds. Art comprises special or exceptional dishes, paintings, and music.
So what, then, is my definition of fine art? Briefly, I believe there must be at least 2 considerations to label something as 'art'. The starting time is that there must be something recognizable in the mode of 'author-to-audience reception'. I hateful to say, there must be the recognition that something was made for an audience of some kind to receive, discuss or enjoy. Implicit in this point is the evident recognizability of what the art actually is – in other words, the writer doesn't have to tell you it's fine art when yous otherwise wouldn't have any thought. The second point is only the recognition of skill: some obvious skill has to exist involved in making fine art. This, in my view, would be the minimum requirements – or definition – of fine art. Fifty-fifty if you lot disagree with the particulars, some definition is required to brand annihilation at all art. Otherwise, what are nosotros fifty-fifty discussing? I'1000 breaking the mold and ask for brass tacks.
Brannon McConkey, Tennessee
Author of Student of Life: Why Becoming Engaged in Life, Art, and Philosophy Tin can Lead to a Happier Being
Human being beings appear to have a compulsion to categorize, to organize and define. We seek to impose society on a welter of sense-impressions and memories, seeing regularities and patterns in repetitions and associations, ever on the sentinel for correlations, eager to make up one's mind crusade and effect, so that we might give sense to what might otherwise seem random and inconsequential. However, particularly in the last century, we have also learned to have pleasure in the reflection of unstructured perceptions; our creative means of seeing and listening have expanded to encompass disharmony and irregularity. This has meant that culturally, an ever-widening gap has grown betwixt the attitudes and opinions of the majority, who continue to define fine art in traditional ways, having to exercise with society, harmony, representation; and the minority, who look for originality, who try to see the world afresh, and strive for divergence, and whose disquisitional do is rooted in abstraction. In between there are many who abstain both extremes, and who both notice and give pleasure both in defining a personal vision and in practising craftsmanship.
There will always be a challenge to traditional concepts of art from the shock of the new, and tensions effectually the ceremoniousness of our understanding. That is how things should be, as innovators push at the boundaries. At the same time, we volition continue to take pleasure in the beauty of a mathematical equation, a finely-tuned auto, a successful scientific experiment, the technology of landing a probe on a comet, an accomplished poem, a striking portrait, the sound-globe of a symphony. We apportion significance and meaning to what we find of value and wish to share with our fellows. Our art and our definitions of dazzler reverberate our human nature and the multiplicity of our artistic efforts.
In the end, because of our individuality and our varied histories and traditions, our debates will ever be inconclusive. If nosotros are wise, we volition look and listen with an open spirit, and sometimes with a wry smile, always jubilant the multifariousness of man imaginings and achievements.
David Howard, Church building Stretton, Shropshire
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Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/What_is_Art_and_or_What_is_Beauty