Response to Tyler

So tyler brought up a really excellent question "My Question: Because of this double nature, the art and the communication, are tattoos stronger in their artness? Is the message of the tattoo irrelevant in weighing its success as a piece of art?"

Well i believe that one of the things which makes tattoos very successful is this dual nature and permenant form of expression. But the meaning, i believe, can only be very meaningfully conveyed, if the quality of the artwork is also very good. If a person has a tattoo that represents a very important time in their life, the meaning shines through when the piece of body art is actually well excecuted. If it does not look nice, it is difficult to take the meaning in question seriously and it is not as effective. Another reason that this aesthetic quality and meaning is very important is becuase people will not want to adorn their bodies with things that they do not think are pleasing. Also, a tattoo can look beautiful without being a representation of something that is dear the the wearer. So the communication of the meaning of a tattoo is very important, but if no one wants to look at it, it is not the kind of received communication that is intended.

So my question for right now is, can a tattoo also have many different subjective meanings, like a conventional piece of art?

In this chapter, there was a quote which i feel examined artistic identifications very well and helped to make understanding the concept of understanding background information very effective.

"Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point when i saw that mountains are not mountains and waters are not waters. But now that i have got the very substance I am at rest. For it is just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters. "

This quote really points out the importance of understanding, which is a main component of appreciating an artwork in some cases, but it also really stresses the fact that beautiful things need to be seen as what they are for the sake of being beautiful alone. This does arise concern and question because understanding can sometimes diminish the appreciation of the piece itself in some cases. Like, for instance, say there is a beautiful paining that I see for the first time, and then I find out, it was painted by Hitler. And that can have a great effect on the judgement of the artwork. But it does not have to do with the aesthtic quality of the art, it has to do with our moral ability to appreciate art even when circumstances prove to be less than perfect.

So in order for things to be appreciated as they truly are, we go through phases of seeing for what it is, then trying to understand them, and then once we know how to understand, we can see them for the way they are again. This reminds me of and adage "If you ever want to know what should be done with the world, ask a very old person or a very young child." it seems that we have the instinct for seeing things as they are, and then they are clouded as we go through life and are exposed to different things, especially in the artistic sense and our abilities to interpret it.

So this leads me to my question. is it really that the more you know, the less you understand?

Response to Lisa

This is a response to Lisa's question, "Everybody comes from a different background, a different life; therefore, their subjective views and taste of art will always be different and unique. How can there be a universal agreement on the goodness of art when we all come from a different background of what is considered 'good' or not?"

I think that this question has a complexly simple answer. That, call I it, because there really is not one true way of determining if we all do ascribe to the universal idea of what is good or not. A lot of things can be considered universal, even if they are only culturally exclusive, and that can be a mistake which is made. Also, I think that people do have a certain "wall" of conscience which they develop as a result of our nature, to guide us internally in terms of what is good or wrong. The "goodness" of art is something that is instilled at a young age by being exposed to what has already been decided to be "good" art, and that is reenforced by our morals and beliefs. It is almost subliminal i think. And something which is subliminal can be shared by everyone without thinking. But completely shared? I do not know, that is why I say "complexly simple".

So my question right now is, is bad art easier to recognize universally than good art? Is it more or less ambiguous?

Perspective

So the other day in class, whilst discussing properties of art in terms of artistic value versus aesthetic value, the idea of when art is became much more apparent. OF course Goodman believes that there is a set of criteria that must be assessed in order for a thing to be art in a particular moment, otherwise it is just partially art. But one thing that greatly interested me was the idea that the perspective of some things is experienced differently by different kinds of people. (Not that different perception is a new idea or anything experienced by individuals) But then the idea of people with Synesthasia arose in discussion and i was fascinated. When the brain processed the signals taken into the brain are processed differently in a sensual capacity. So for instance, a person could hear a sight or smell a sound (like in the popular Duran Duran song, Hungry like the Wolf), and so on. And so to cut a long story short, this reminded me of a surrealist poem that i read a number of years ago in a class, entitled "Correspondances" by Baudelaire. In the poem, he speaks of the state in which all of the senses and experiences are intermingled with one another, corresponding to each other, and creating a kind of ecstasy in the senses. And this is all from a surrealist view of the world.

SO my question right now is, is looking at the world through this particular "lens" a more fulfilling way of experiencing things through an individual's senses?

And here is the poem (in english) if any of you are interested.

Nature is a temple in which living pillars
Sometimes give voice to confused words;
Man passes there through forests of symbols
Which look at him with understanding eyes.

Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance
In a deep and tenebrous unity,
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day,
Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond.

There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows
— And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant,

With power to expand into infinity,
Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin,
That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.

so it jsut dawned on me. If we think something is beautiful, we want to keep it. If we dont, then we dont. That is the nature of aesthetics and ethics. 'nuff said.

response to Skyla

so this is a response to Skyla's question, "If humans did not value aesthetics in their everyday lives, how different would the world look and be? Would life be more chaotic and possibly much more meaningless if no one cared about the visual aspects of life? Explain. :)"

Well i think it is kind of impossible for us as humans to not use aesthetics in our everyday lives becuase it is a part of our natures, and you know all about that. But if it were to happen, i do not think we would have ethics (as circular as that is). Because aesthetics gives us an appreciation for things. And that appreciation and love for things is what makes us develop a sense of what is right and what is wrong. Becuase if we appreciate our mothers, then we do not want to do anything bad to them. If something is dangerous, then we try not to do it becuase we do not want to hurt others or ourselves. I do not think life would be more chaotic, becuase look at how it is now, we have ethics anyway and things are chaotic. If we did not have aesthetics, we may not appreciate anything, going through life as a stale promontory unaware of the potential of things. we could be right where we started.

So my question to this is, do we develop more things out of a violation of these morals than the following of them?

what?

Alright so in class this past week we ended up talking a lot about politics and ethics and one analogy after another in an unending discussion of american consumerism. But one thing that really caught my attention was when we were talking about ford and how when the car would explode, it cost more to replace the defective parts than the cost of human life. They actually figured out the cost of a human life. Now that right there says a little bit to my understading of ethics, becuase people are people. People are valuable. People do not have a set worth. Also, some, like Raskolnikov, would say that there are human lives which have more with than others and it is the job of those who are consious of this to get rid of the people that, in their extermination, will have the greatest positive benefit to society. So all this really boils down to the point i am making. In these senses, human life has become a commodity. And that is one of the precise things that Marx was trying to prevent as a result of capitalism. When human life is made a commodity to become efficient, then the ethical values really need to be looked at. And i think that part of the role of Aesthetics on ethics is to make some kind of scale to us which makes us compartmentalize and judge these ethics.

So my question right now is, can an individuals set of ethics be changed by aesthetics?

SO this is a response to Misty's question, Are there many cases where someone spends a ton of time on a piece and it turns out awful looking?

YES. I really think there are. Well actually, since art is soooo incredibly subjective, i think it depends on the viewer and the artist themselves. I can say that from personal experience, there are pieces that i have worked on for an extended period of time, like 3 moths, and i do not like them nearly as much as a painting which took maybe 3 hours. So in these cases, it is determined by my preferences. However, i am not saying that pieces which take a long time, like years, are not all as good as if they had been made in a shorter time. Because so much maticulous care is put into them and time and blood and sweat and tears. I believe it also matters if the artist cares about what is being made. Becuase if it is something that they do not love, then it may still be great, but it does not live up to that potential that a beloved work of art may have. And the artist may think it's awful. But the audience may love it. So one really never knows. I know, thats a very unsatisfying conclusion.

My question for this is, is time relevant at all? or is there some sort of added value to the time which a piece was made in?

Alright so as much as i do adore Hume, that antimony still drives me crazy and after many sleepless nights of contemplation, i have come to the conclusion that art is natural to our natures as humans. Because only something that is so natural could be the subject of such complex debate. For example, for part of the antimony, that humans all have this general agreement for what is art, and what art is considered better than others. How can we come to this conclusion, because last time i checked, humans did not have a collective mentality, so that agreement must be something which is natural to us. And that nature is shared among all humans so that we can have that general agreement. When personal taste is involved, i believe that is a subject of the individual's experiences and place in the world. So that individual has those things which they particularly enjoy, and then the other things that they agree with all others that are good.

And so that brings me over to the question of elephant paintings. Are they art? Well they are not art to the elephants because it is not in their natures to do so. But it is in our natures to look at it in an artistic fashion. ta-da!

So this brings me to my question, if creating art is in our natures, then is appreciating and loving art in it also? or is it something which needs to be conditioned and taught?