But is it art? - Cynthia Freeland [book]
p. 2001 p. oxford university press?
978-0-19285367-7
(all quotations) (my own thoughts in red)
Introduction
About - what art is, what it means and why we value it.
- loosely 'art theories' - specifically will look for the imitation theory, expression theory and cognitive theory.
-A theory should help things make sense rather than create obscurity through jargon and weighty words.
-Many modern artworks challenge us to figure out why, on any theory they would count as art.
-In classical Japanese aesthetics, art might include things unexpected by modern Westerners, like a garden, sword, calligraphy scroll, or tea ceremony.
-Many Philosophers from Plato onwards have proposed art theories:
medieval colossus Thomas Aquinas
Enlightenments key figures Hume + Kant
notorious iconoclast Friedrich Neitzsche
diverse 20th cent figures John Dewey, Arthur Danto, Michel Foucault + Jean Baudrillard
(Foucault is cropping up a lot recently, research into him)
-Have chosen shock tactics
-Among the hardest problems an art theory faces are questions about how to settle art's meaning through interpretation (chapter 6). We will consider whether an artwork as 'a' meaning, and how theorists have tried to capture or explain it-whether by studying artists' feelings and ideas, their childhood and unconscious desires, or their brains(!).
This above quote, chapter 6, perhaps will be most relevant to the seer section of my dissertation, to have not 'given the game away' as it were in the earliest chapter with Van Gogh.
Chapter 1 - Blood and beauty
-why has blood been used in so much art? One reason is that it has interesting similarities to paint.
-Obviously, blood has a host of expressive and symbolic associations. (dangerous, loss of virginity, adulthood, holy, noble)
Blood and ritual
-ritual theory
-For participants in a ritual, clarity and agreements of purpose are central; the ritual reinforces the community's proper relation to God or nature through gestures that everyone kows and understands. But audiences who see and react to a modern artist do not enter in with shared beliefs and values, or with prior knowledge of what will transpire. p4
-Art world is a competitive place, and artists need any edge they can get, including shock value.
-Serrano infamous photograph 'Piss Christ'
-Hume would not approve of blasphemy, immoraility, sex etc
-The writings of Hume(1711-1776) and his scussor Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) form the basis of modern aesthetic theory...
Taste and beauty
-aesthetics - from Greek word for sensation or perception
-Hume used the term 'taste' a refined ability to perceive quality in an artwork - subjective?
-How do you prove that your taste is better than mine? Hume and Kant both struggled with this problem. Both men beleived that some works of art really are better than others, and that some people have better taste. How could they account for this?
-Hume emphasised education and experience
-Kant more concerned with judgements of beauty, good judgements grounded in the artwork themselves
-judgements of taste are 'intersubjective' p11
-Kant beleived that judgements of beauty were universal and grounded in the real world, even though they were not actually 'objective'. How could this be?
-something beautiful has 'purposiveness without a purpose'
Beauty and disinterestedness
-When you call a thing beautiful, you thereby assert that everyone ought to agree. Though the label is prompted by a subjective awareness or feeling of pleasure, it supposedly has objective application to the world
I see this possibly having a connection with what I'm looking at and how a self-portrait is percieved.
Kant's legacy
[X] I think for now I will leave this and a few chapters for now and select a chosen few.
Chapter 6 - Cognition, creation, comprehension
Getting at meaning
-Gender and sexual preference-together with nationality, ethnicity, politics, and religion- all seem to have some impact on the meaning of art. p148
-What must we know to clarify an artwork's meaning: external facts about artists' lives, or internal facts about how their works were made?
Useful for my context driven chapters...
-Both the expression and the cognitive theories of art hold that art communicates: it can communicate feelings and emotions, or thoughts and ideas. p149
-Interpretation is important because it helps explain how art does this.
-I would describe interpretations as explanations of how a work functions to communicate thoughts, emotions and ideas. A good interpretation must be grounded in reasons and evidence, and should provide a rich, complex, and illuminating way to comprehend a work of art. p150
Interpretation: a case study
-Although no one interpretation is 'true' in an absolute sense, some interpretations of art seem better than others.
-Expressionist painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
In interpreting I am forced to have contextual information available to understand it... I need perhaps to know the authors intent, their background, others interpretation of what he meant, and this then would cohere to a meaning about the work and may be stronger or weaker than other arguments for a true meaning. (for seer chapter for context)
Triptych 1973
-Sylvestor inadequate interpretation of Bacons work
- Bacon himself rejected readings of his work in terms of either his personal obsessions or the supposed angst of the twentieth century. He claimed his work was only about painting p152
This is good. For the Van Gogh chapter I can argue in the beginning that interpretation is irrelevant because the artist had already given his intent and that was to paint his feelings and emotions onto the canvas which IS a conscious decision.
-obsessed with other painters, especially Van Gogh, Picasso
-Still I don't quite beleive Bacon completely, nor would I rule out his biography altogether; it somehow provides background context for the raw urgency and harrowing content of the paintings p153
This could be important later
John Russell had another critic
-Interpretations are superior if they explain more aspects of the artist's work. The best interpretations pay attention both to Bacon's formal style and to his content. In interpreting Bacon, I would not 'reduce' his art to his biography, but some facts about his life seem to reveal things about how he painted people
Again, important..
-...illustrates the favoured cognitive theory of art........ expression theory of art can be seen in bacon's work
Expression theory: Tolstoy
Essay at the beginning MUST remember that I am assuming it is the artist who is creating their own identity and representation themselves... it doesn't need any interpretation and context just yet, well not in the sense that one may disagree yet. Van Gogh is creating, not interpreting... try to remember this to avoid myself getting into trouble when thinking about this. So my research must then support this creation of his identity... done through his correlation of events, he wants to be portrayed in a certain way... CAN mention cohering context but I shalnt make too much of it yet and return to it later in the essay.
Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist (1828-1910) had this view that art communicates something in the realm of feelings and emotions, famous essay 'what is art?'
-some critics of Tolstoy some theorists claim one need not have the feeling in question in order to communicate it
Could these not be supportive of Van Gogh? Or criticise him?
If Bacon took weeks or even months to complete his Triptych in 1973, it seems unlikely he was himself 'feeling' one emotion the entire time p156
Managed to explain how Van Gogh did!
-The expressiveness is in the work, not the artist
Perhaps I would come back to this as a later criticism of Van Gogh and support the seer and interpretation of art being the most important thing.
Freud on sex and sublimation
psychoanalyst Freud saw art as an expression
Freud thought art expressed UNCONSIOUS feelings
This could then further be an evolution of my dissertation to later criticise Van Gogh so his work CANT be accurate because he is driven by his unconsious feelings...
-sublimation may sound negative, but it's not
pycho analytic interpretations
claimed works of art, such as Leonardo's refer back to his childhood
-I next what to describe a group of expressionist theorists who focused less on biography than on art itself, holding that art is capable of expressing more conscious ideas and beleifs p159
Key word here being CONSCIOUS support for Van Gogh
Expressing ideas
A chief problem with expression theory, whether Tolstoy's or Freud's is that it seems too limiting to insist that art can only express emotions (whether conscious or unconscious).
-One way to put this objection at rest is to suggest it also portrays ideas.
revised version of expression theory devised by variety of people:
Benedetto Croce (1866-1952)
R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943)
Suzanne Langer (1895- 1985)
all three endorsed the view that art can express or convey ideas as well as feelings.
Foucault and Las Meninas p162
INTRODUCE THIS by death of the author talk...
-death of the author view by Foucault 1926-1984 and roland barthes
What is an author? 1969
become too locked by searching for correct interpretations
what the author intended
representation of representation
in this episteme the subject cannot truly percieve himself.
Cognitive theories: pragmatism
John Dewey
philosophical approach of pragmatism
art can be a source of knowledge
Nelson Goodman developed this...
(skipped some reading...)
Mind, brain, and art
new field of cognitive science changed perception of the mind since freud dewey goodman
MRI scans
some worry that a scientific explanation of art will be reductive p171
ramachandran
Interpretation as explanation
expression theory focuses on what an artist is expressing in a work
proponents Freud and Tolstoy
Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk
But is it art? [interpretation/context section]
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