View Full Version : An interesting essay on art
Stumbled tonight on this essay (http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html) by Paul Graham. I'm sure the ideas explored there will relate to many people here. Clear analysis written in good language, well worth reading.
Welsh_Italian
08-19-2007, 02:46
Thanks for the link Eugene, it was a good read.
Morca007
08-19-2007, 15:33
Thought provoking and a good read, thanks for the link.
Hmm, taste is not subjective, yet I found this essay boring and not very well thought out, which does not seem to be the concensus here. Is that irony?
Thought provoking indeed, while the author seems to equate art with decor.
nikonhswebmaster
08-19-2007, 21:12
As an artist it would frankly be mean spirited to pick on the guy, lets just celebrate the fact he is thinking.
In his own Homer Simpson sort of way he sums it all up -- "art isn't apples"
OK-- I take it back (about no picking). I read the end of the essay. "There are fields now in which many people work with the same energy and honesty that fifteenth century artists did, but art is not one of them."
I often kid my GF about her PhD.
Hmm, taste is not subjective, yet I found this essay boring and not very well thought out, which does not seem to be the concensus here. Is that irony?
Kinda agree with you.
That taste is not subjective, nihil novi sub sole, nothing new here. What taste is, how art work can be appreciated "universally", if it is possible, how different people (and not necessarily from different cultures) can talk about the same piece of art and understand each other ... that is the tricky thing.
That taste is not subjective, nihil novi sub sole, nothing new here.
Marc, you'll be surprised how many people will disagree with that. Especially with folks buying into postmodernism.
nikonhswebmaster
08-21-2007, 04:58
This is an very embarrassing, and childlike, article by a very smart guy.
Taste and subjectivity?
I suppose it's easier to read than Kant's Critique of Judgement, even if the latter is sometimes wrong on certain points. Or Hume's "Standard of Taste." Or perhaps the entire damn 2,000 years of discussion in aesthetics about taste since the Greeks.
But that's okay, because everyone can understand art, so everyone can write about it...
Taste and subjectivity?
I suppose it's easier to read than Kant's Critique of Judgement, even if the latter is sometimes wrong on certain points. Or Hume's "Standard of Taste." Or perhaps the entire damn 2,000 years of discussion in aesthetics about taste since the Greeks.
But that's okay, because everyone can understand art, so everyone can write about it...
Would that be High, Mass, Popular or Avant-Garde, they’d be writing about?
:)
The logic is pretty shaky, and he doesn't hold my interest, but I respect the fact that his essay is not written in convoluted art-speak
Taste and subjectivity?
I suppose it's easier to read than Kant's Critique of Judgement, even if the latter is sometimes wrong on certain points. Or Hume's "Standard of Taste." Or perhaps the entire damn 2,000 years of discussion in aesthetics about taste since the Greeks.
But that's okay, because everyone can understand art, so everyone can write about it...
Absolutely! Right on!
Kinda agree with you.
That taste is not subjective, nihil novi sub sole, nothing new here. What taste is, how art work can be appreciated "universally", if it is possible, how different people (and not necessarily from different cultures) can talk about the same piece of art and understand each other ... that is the tricky thing.
Taste is subjective, but biological, cultural, and personal aspects are all weighing in.
I tried hard, but lost interest, mainly because I didn't find the arguments convincing on any level.
antiquark
08-21-2007, 09:53
From the article:
There are fields now in which many people work with the same energy and honesty that fifteenth century artists did, but art is not one of them.
I'd beg to differ. From what I've seen over the years, artists work extremely hard at their vocation.
Would that be High, Mass, Popular or Avant-Garde, they’d be writing about?
:)
Hehe, it's difficult to figure out. Past High Art (let's say Monet) has now faded into Popular Art (Monet posters), and the latter has probably faded into Post-Modern Art (sampling, appropriation), which is itself a kind of Mass Avant Garde (subvert all categories!).
By that reasoning, given that Kant, Hume, and all the other fun guys were analyzing High Art (can you make those capitals bigger?), their genotypes are pretty much everywhere down the tree of art and scholarship.
Absolutely! Right on!
Merci mon vieux!
Hehe, it's difficult to figure out. Past High Art (let's say Monet) has now faded into Popular Art (Monet posters), and the latter has probably faded into Post-Modern Art (sampling, appropriation), which is itself a kind of Mass Avant Garde (subvert all categories!).
By that reasoning, given that Kant, Hume, and all the other fun guys were analyzing High Art (can you make those capitals bigger?), their genotypes are pretty much everywhere down the tree of art and scholarship.
That’s the thing; the viewer or commentator not only brings his aesthetic judgment to a work but also his intellectual, his taste is clouded by his knowledge. I have to conclude that appreciation of art is just too complex to theorise about as each viewer brings to the work his on subjective reality “art for arts sake” is still the best explanation I have.
Taste is subjective, but biological, cultural, and personal aspects are all weighing in.
Hi Finder,
I was referring to the "bon goût" or aesthetic taste in the kantian sense. BTW, even with no such reference, I can say taste is not merely subjective, or it is so in a very weak sense. We have to distinguish carefully between taste and preference when it comes to art. For instance, I don't like Wagner's Walküre but I love Bach's Italian Concertos or Well-Tempered Clavier: it's a matter of preference. But if I say Wagner's music is crap, then it clearly shows a lack of taste. That's why taste is not subjective.
Best,
Marc-A.
That’s the thing; the viewer or commentator not only brings his aesthetic judgment to a work but also his intellectual, his taste is clouded by his knowledge. I have to conclude that appreciation of art is just too complex to theorise about as each viewer brings to the work his on subjective reality “art for arts sake” is still the best explanation I have.
I think the mechanisms of taste (i.e. the inferences, the reasonings, the emotions, the social factors, etc) are rather more understandable than the actual content of a judgement of taste (i.e. one's evaluation of a work).
For example, if you make some sociological analysis, you'll see trends correlating liking Mozart with, say, income or education. But it does not explain whether these works are good in any sense.
So it's possible to make an explanation from the person to the work, but it's much more difficult (intractable? I dunno) to make a similar explanation from the work itself to the appreciation.
I think the mechanisms of taste (i.e. the inferences, the reasonings, the emotions, the social factors, etc) are rather more understandable than the actual content of a judgement of taste (i.e. one's evaluation of a work).
For example, if you make some sociological analysis, you'll see trends correlating liking Mozart with, say, income or education. But it does not explain whether these works are good in any sense.
So it's possible to make an explanation from the person to the work, but it's much more difficult (intractable? I dunno) to make a similar explanation from the work itself to the appreciation.
Yes I agree, however if I were asked to make a judgment between Paul Simon’s Graceland’s and the second movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony, both of which have great significance for me, I would find it impossible to determine what proportion was emotional as opposed to environmental.
Similarly I “know” Guernica is a great painting, by a great artist, so I feel like a bad person because I don’t actually like it; despite, or maybe because of a degree in art and art history; I am conditioned by my knowledge
How often do you suspect someone on this forum judges photos by the equipment used in it’s production rather than the image itself?
Or are we saying the same thing perhaps?
Yes I agree, however if I were asked to make a judgment between Paul Simon’s Graceland’s and the second movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony, both of which have great significance for me, I would find it impossible to determine what proportion was emotional as opposed to environmental.
Similarly I “know” Guernica is a great painting, by a great artist, so I feel like a bad person because I don’t actually like it; despite, or maybe because of a degree in art and art history; I am conditioned by my knowledge
How often do you suspect someone on this forum judges photos by the equipment used in it’s production rather than the image itself?
Or are we saying the same thing perhaps?
I think we have rather similar viewpoints, which are basically the same starting point that Kant and Hume used: of course, preferences are contingent, relative to each person, but why do make them at all? How are they even possible?
amateriat
08-21-2007, 22:49
For an interesting (slightly "alternate?") musing, go here (http://www.plexus.org/morgan/endofart.html).
Art: hard to create, sometimes much harder to describe or agree on.
- Barrett
I think we have rather similar viewpoints, which are basically the same starting point that Kant and Hume used: of course, preferences are contingent, relative to each person, but why do make them at all? How are they even possible?
I can only answer for myself, I do it to earn a living (2D designer) and because I have, as everyone else has I think, a need to communicate none verbally with the rest of mankind.
I try to understand art’s effect on others so I can make more money and better convey my views
regards
For an interesting (slightly "alternate?") musing, go here (http://www.plexus.org/morgan/endofart.html).
Art: hard to create, sometimes much harder to describe or agree on.
- Barrett
Thanks Barrett; I think…….my head hurts now. Anyway it’s well argued, constructed, and written but it still, for me, has the problem I have most difficulty with.
It makes all its arguments on the assumption that knowledge and understanding is an aide to art appreciation and not as I find increasingly a barrier to it, and it also takes for granted that today’s understanding is superia to that of past generations.
I think it was pnet where HBC received an “honest” and modern criticism, by virtue of the critic’s ignorance.
regards
For an interesting (slightly "alternate?") musing, go here (http://www.plexus.org/morgan/endofart.html).
Art: hard to create, sometimes much harder to describe or agree on.
- Barrett
I would say this guy has to go and get some fresh air:
I would argue that in the most fundamental sense to be an artist is ultimately a task of liberation. This is to suggest that to be an artist in the international sense is not simply about marketing one's logo, but is also about maintaining oneself in opposition to the assumption that the information network carries its own "natural" momentum and will automatically improve life. It would seem that artists cannot escape the ethical responsibility to resist this ominpresent pressure - the wholesale seduction - that the "art world" assumes in its desire for a revisionist informational environment. To be an artist - regardless of how ones success is measured - has always been a matter of intelligence, passion , constraint, shrewdness, and wit. This implies a position of resistance, but not one of denial. The power of art lies in its oblique angle to the accepted cultural norm. Artists define themselves as artists both in terms of their attraction and repulsion to this norm. The crucial issue here is in finding what sustains the necessity of one¹s liberation, because artists will move in relation to this necessity more than in the pursuit of ideas.
I wonder want his assumptions are based on?
I find art critism a bankrupt discipline. Give someone a couse in sociology and a vocabulary and you get steam of consciousness babbling.
"Historically, art has been able to sustain itself as a conduit of expression"
"I would argue that in the most fundamental sense to be an artist is ultimately a task of liberation."
Baloney. That's what the Romantics thought about art, not a historical constant.
This essay is low on research, and too high on fluff.
I find art critism a bankrupt discipline. Give someone a couse in sociology and a vocabulary and you get steam of consciousness babbling.
Finder,
Sometimes I really don't get you. You're a very subtle mind and I always highly value your opinion (though we often disagree), but here I just don't understand why you're saying such a simplistic thing.
Best,
Marc
i thought this essay would go somewhere and was just provoking me to read on with it's silly ideas in the beginning... and then it ended.
Finder,
Sometimes I really don't get you. You're a very subtle mind and I always highly value your opinion (though we often disagree), but here I just don't understand why you're saying such a simplistic thing.
Best,
Marc
Well, thank you. I have always enjoyed your comments as well.
First, all generalizations are false.
Unforunately, the nature of internet forums limit posts to very simple answers. Naturally, this makes for very general statements. This presents a problem as, unlike a relationship with actual people where you kind of know and understand them and therefore a context exsists to envaluate simple comments, there is no reference to the person making the statements.
Let me try to be clear on my position on art criticism.
I think there have been very good work in aesthetics. While I cannot always agree with everything, most of the work is thoughtful and is within its limits reasonable/logical. For example, I think The Pholosophy in a New Key by Susan Langer is an excellent work whether you agree with it or not. I have enjoyed work by others that have thought on this subject such as Kant, Schopenhauer, Plotius, Coomaraswamy, to name a few (a metaphysical bent may be detected, but I would not assume to much by that). The only work I have read by Danto, I find annoying though.
When I refer to art criticism, I am refering to the style of the art pundit. The folks who make, in my view, very lazy statements like, "the function of art is to make you think." These writers (I am including the author of the essay in the link as well as work like On Photography by Susan Sontag), stream opinions and mental contortions from their own limited imagination on whatever subject they think their expressions should grace - and they use annoying syntax like in the sentence I just wrote. This is the field I think is bankrupt. This is what I mostly find today written on art.
Does that help?
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