# Huilu's Philosophy of the Arts Thread



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

This is a shameless public service announcement.

I have a final exam in 3 weeks for my Philosophy of the Arts class, but I have no one to study with! 

So this is what I wanna do. Beginning here at the Original Post, I will be posting names of Philosophers, theories, and various vocabulary terms on discussing art philosophy right here, and I ask _you the people_ to quiz me and ask me questions! I will post my answers here as well. So, it's a win-win situation! I study, and you learn cool stuff about aesthetics to do with visual art, music, and more!

I will be starting my perusal of philosophers with Tolstoy and Clive Bell, because our midterm was right before discussing them, and at the moment it's unnecessary to re-study those other people because it won't be a cumulative final. However, if anyone's curious about someone like Aristotle or Kant, I can still post some stuff for fun. I remember it all really well, and you know why? Because I studied with someone online by talking to them about philosophers, and also talked to my brother and his wife who know philosophy quite well. The action of typing out helps me retain information. 

So here we begin! Now I know these words look scary, but believe me, they're all really interesting and not scary, and also not only specific to visual art! All these theories apply to music too. _And a caveat, these theories are not all alike in relevance or credibility today._ Many of these philosophers contradict the other, and some hold more water than others. The point of the class is to look through as many theories as possible so we can come to conclusions for ourselves.

So whatever sounds interesting, ask away!

*Philosophers/Art Critics (with theory or article title beside)*

Tolstoy: What is Art?

Bell: Formalism (ever heard of this one applied to Shostakovich? It's the same Formalism )

R. Fry (art critic) : Isolationism

Collingwood: Expressionism

Dewey: Experientialism

Heidigger: Phenomenology

Beardsley: Creation of Art

Sibley (art critic) : non-conditionality

Walton: Categories of Art

*Terms (not in any order related to the names above)*

Representation/Resemblance

Standard/Variable/Contra-Standard

Aesthetic Terms

Intentional Fallacy

Propulsive Theory

Finalistic Theory

Divine Inspiration Theory

Incept

Art vs. Craft

"Expressing" Emotion

Unexpressed Emotion

Creation vs. Fabrication

The 2 Modes of Being

Mere Things / Tools / Art

"Total Imaginative Experience"

Aesthetic Emotion vs. Significant Form

Occurrence conditions/ Application conditions

Thank you in advance!


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Well, formalism at least is simple: the definition of formalist music is "whatever Comrade Stalin doesn't like." 

Some of the above topics may well be interesting, but I find that I can usually not make head or tails of philosophy...


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I actually took a Philosophy of Art class in college, and I don't think a single reading or topic overlaps with your course! 

Actually, I think I was supposed to read some Heidegger, so that would've possibly overlapped, but since I was such a diligent student, I didn't get around to the Heidegger.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

It's a pity you don't have Kierkegaard: he has a lot of thoughts about Don Giovanni (Either/Or, the central part) and he is a great writer.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

TxllxT said:


> It's a pity you don't have Kierkegaard: he has a lot of thoughts about Don Giovanni (Either/Or, the central part) and he is a great writer.


He also has a lot of thought about how music is different from plastic arts (he doesn't use that term of course). The problem is that it's hard to tell what he's serious about in _Either/Or_ and guys like Heidegger will deal with the same themes more straightforwardly.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'm just goggling stuff here to see what's going on in the philosophy of art these days, and I found this:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collingwood-aesthetics/

Of course I'm not sure that helps, but it's something. And now, if you like, we can talk about Collingwood!


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

science said:


> He also has a lot of thought about how music is different from plastic arts (he doesn't use that term of course). The problem is that it's hard to tell what he's serious about in _Either/Or_ and guys like Heidegger will deal with the same themes more straightforwardly.


For me Don Giovanni and Kierkegaard's pseudonym _Johannes_ are the most serious seducers I know, that's not hard to tell, is it? With regard to the art of seduction I do not understand how straightforwardness (or Heidegger) can be of any help.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I'm sorry for not responding! I actually have been working at studying other philosophers than the ones mentioned above, and as soon as that's been done, then I'll start talking about all the rest. That'll take a few days.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

TxllxT said:


> For me Don Giovanni and Kierkegaard's pseudonym _Johannes_ are the most serious seducers I know, that's not hard to tell, is it? With regard to the art of seduction I do not understand how straightforwardness (or Heidegger) can be of any help.


Um, by "serious" I meant sincere. Kierkegaard definitely does not mean for us to identify Johannes's thoughts or Judge William's thoughts with his own.

The arts we have in mind don't include "the art of seduction," which might count as a craft (in terms that other philosophers would use).

I guess I can imagine an actual "art" of seduction - seduction as a performance. A person tells his or her friends, "watch this," and proceeds to seduce someone before their eyes, a performance for their aesthetic contemplation. In a sense that's what Johannes is doing, though he is trying to be both artist and audience. Does it work? I doubt it. When the same self is the artist and audience, it's practice rather than true performance.

Anyway, definitely off topic. The topic is not Don Giovanni's "art" of seduction, but Mozart's art in _Don Giovanni_.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

So I just found out that my philosophy professor is actually kinda a big deal. Having read his faculty bio online, I knew he was pretty impressive, but now I just found out something more. In the Anthology of philosophers that we are reading in class, I just stumbled upon one of his OWN essays. He's in an anthology alongside Kant, Tolstoy and many others! :O And the essay is called, "What a Musical Work is" and he discusses classical music in particular.

Hmmm....

After the semester is over, I'm gonna read it and tell you guys about it. Considering such hot topics are discussed on a fairly regular basis.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> And the essay is called, "What a Musical Work is" and he discusses classical music in particular.


I think I read that one a few years back.

Are you reading Kant's essay on discernment, or Hume's? Those were the ones I remember dealing with in the most detail when I wrote on musical evaluation.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> I think I read that one a few years back.
> 
> Are you reading Kant's essay on discernment, or Hume's? Those were the ones I remember dealing with in the most detail when I wrote on musical evaluation.


I read Kant's essays on the Beautiful and the Sublime, and Hume's essay on Standard of Taste. They didn't cover music in particular, but their ideas apply to music most definitely. My philosopher professor discredited Hume though (and Kant even did), saying he was too subjective.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I wish it'd pay more to philosophize. One of my favorite topics in college. Alas, I had to focus on the mind-numbing business route in pursuit of the almighty dollar.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

science said:


> I'm just goggling stuff here to see what's going on in the philosophy of art these days, and I found this:
> 
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collingwood-aesthetics/
> 
> Of course I'm not sure that helps, but it's something. And now, if you like, we can talk about Collingwood!


As to what you said before about having no overlap with what I posted, depending on how old you are, a number of those essays may not have been written, or at least published to a wider audience, when you were in college. Some of this stuff is very new, even 20-30 years ago. All the more important to read, though.

Yes, I can talk about Collingwood now. And I'd like to begin this discussion on the fact that he is the most made-fun-of philosopher of the early 20th century because he holds the singular position on art that no one ever before or since has agreed with. :lol: And I'll explain why.

Collingwood discussed 2 important ideas, the difference between art vs. craft, and the inspiration of art. With art vs. craft, he contrasted a number of opposing subjects.

Creation vs. Fabrication: Creativity is distinctively an artistic merit, and Fabrication (reproduction, exact imitation) belongs to craft.

Material/Means vs. Finished Product: Product must be formed from Material, but the raw material can't be the product. Thus wood isn't automatically a chair. HOWEVER, notes aren't the "material" of music, as if a composer were given 10 thousand distinct notes and have to use each one once in a composition (that's absurdity), or a poet is given 100 words for which he must arrange into sentences like a puzzle. Tools are absolutely necessary to craft something (i.e. hammer, nails, glue, etc.) But does a pencil create poetry or music? Does a comfortable chair and cigar spontaneously evoke a melody? Art doesn't work that way. But see further point.

Plan vs. Execution: Craft has a distinction of plan and execution while art doesn't. You can plan to build a chair and then follow that plan, but with art both plan and execution happen interdependently and not as temporally distinct from each other. Furthermore about the success of the plan, the Finished Product in craft must produce the plan (i.e. the plan for a chair should not lead to the finished product being a table). However, if a poet were to start with one plan and proceed in a new direction creating something else, he has not failed as a poet, nor would a composer with music. Also, the "Final Product" of art isn't obligatory nor is it determined by its success. A composer with unintended effects in their composition on their audience is still a composer.

Now what I have stated so far is not what's been debated. A lot of people agree with these kinds of dichotomies (including Glazunov who knew about this theory and stated that this is the reason he considered Jazz an art and not just a craft of musicians playing random, seemingly unplanned stuff). But what I'm about to say next is on the theory of the origin of art according to Collingwood.

Collingwood proposed the Propulsive Theory - The Artist is inflicted with an unexpressed, unclarified emotion, usually very distressing. There is a desire to express this emotion. Collingwood's idea of _expressing _emotion is not the same as describing, arousing, purging, or any such other idea. To express an emotion is to clarify the emotion for oneself in order to gain relief of mind. The actual expressing of this emotion is called the "imaginative experience of total activity" because it starts in the mind, in the imagination, and can take on any sort of activity, be it music, art, words, etc. It is ideal that the artist express these emotions externally, and Collingwood assumes this as the only way the artist can fully achieve their relief of mind, however, it's not obligatory. Therefore, what Collingwood implies is that the art is already inside the artist's mind before they even try to externalize it, and if theoretically they were to gain their satisfaction of expression there, they wouldn't have to externalize anything in the first place! And it would still be called art! And here's the REAL bonkers idea: when the viewer/audience looks upon an externalize product of expressed emotion, they are not feeling the ARTIST'S emotion, but their OWN imaginative experience which may or may not be like the artist's. Again, it would be ideal if they were the same, but Collingwood leaves this open and says that this can never be guaranteed.

So final conclusion: Collingwood believes that simply coming up with a musical composition in one's head without writing it down is still art, and that when someone listens to that work performed, they are not relating to the composer at all but having their own experience. There is no relation between artist and common person, only shots in the dark where hopefully things will end up right.

No theorist agrees with this today. 

My personal impressions: I think Collingwood's theory is extremely self-absorbed, that art would only be for the artist's relief of mind, that communication is not only discouraged but basically impossible, and everyone's feelings to his or herself.

OBJECTIONS: Some other theorists (ex. Beardsley) have said that there are art works (ex Bruckner's symphonies) where basically there IS no clarification of emotion. The piece ends in the same confusion as it began, and there was no relief, so was that not art? And what if the artist just wanted to make something to share with others and never had any sort of distress of unexpressed emotion? And what about the anti-expressionist artists who refuse to express any sort of emotion? And for crying out loud, how can THINKING a poem, painting, or composition be enough to consider it art?? In that case, we're all artists, and we never have to show anyone our most wonderful mind-paintings which we'll never paint for lack of skill.  All of these objections discredit the Propulsive Theory.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Today I will begin posting some more!

I will discuss Tolstoy's theory on art, one of the most simple of all the philosophers I've had to deal with.

In his work _What is Art?_ Tolstoy wishes to disqualify the idea that art is anything that simply gives pleasure. He disagrees that the pleasurable element of art has anything to do with the intrinsic nature of the art. Pleasure is something that will be evoked due to subjective and socially constructed elements. There are plenty of art forms that can give feelings of pain rather than pleasure, of sadness rather than happiness. Art is defined by its purpose and not its after-effects, just as food is regarded for nourishment before being regarded for pleasure.

Rather, his definition of art goes something like this: Art is that which communicates the emotions of an artist to another through an external medium. (The condition here is that it _does _communicate, not that it intends to communicate)

This would seem to be a pretty well-thought-out idea. Communication is what most art/music appreciators tend to think about first when they think about their favorite forms of art. Art is about expressing oneself to others, right? The building of harmony between man and man?

It would seem that Tolstoy is saying that only if the art "works" can it be called art, but isn't that we normally call good art? For him, "bad" art is not art at all.

What makes good art to Tolstoy? He has 2 degrees to measure this, that of content (quality) and quanitity (# of people). Good art will have either religious and/or universal elements being expressed in it. The emotions evoked would be shared by all kinds of people no matter where they come from. For quantity, it would be how many people are united at the same time, i.e. how many people are "infected" with the art. The more "infectious" the expressive power of the art, the better it is. How does an artist make an infectious piece of art? By being sincere, individual, and clear. To be individual and universal isn't a contradiction, for the more individual the artist's voice is, it tends to actually draw more people together by its originality.

Objections: There is one thing that he perhaps leaves out of his theory, and that is the few exceptions where a work of art doesn't have the chance to communicate to another person. For example, a painting being made up in the attic where only the artist is seeing it. Is that art yet? According to Tolstoy's theory, it _has _to communicate to somebody (other than the artist), but that doesn't make sense. We all know intuitively that an artwork that hasn't been displayed, or a composition that hasn't been premiered is still a work of art! Some theorists have modified his belief by saying the artist's intention to communicate should be what qualifies the work as art, not that it has communicated itself yet.

Another Objection: What about all the avant-garde artists who said they didn't want to communicate anything to their viewers? It was just meaningless nonsense? Well, Tolstoy would have called them rubbish for sure, and not art. Still, we call things like Duchamp's Fountain and installations of piles of trash "art" today. So, Tolstoy has a few gaps in his theory. Otherwise, however, I would say that I like his theory because at least he's an objectivist and believes art should be a healthy, life-inspiring aspiration and not something to isolate and encourage evil in society. Nevertheless, I don't quite like the functionalist view on art, that it has to _actually _do something to be art. I'd still call it art even if it failed to inspire any emotions in me, or I had no idea what the artist was trying to communicate. I'd call it rubbish, but still art.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Clive Bell on Art

Bell was a Formalist. This mean that he believed that representation has little to no significance to the work of art. What matters is Significant Form, i.e. Form that produces Aesthetic Emotion.

Aesthetic Emotion is that which is disinterested (a Kantian term that means you are not getting anything functionally from the object, like physical nourishment), and focused on pure emotion evoked by appearance.

Bell's Metaphysical Hypothesis - Significant Forms show the true nature of reality (what this means he never went into detail on)

Concerning disagreement between people who see the same Significant Form, but have opposing aesthetic emotions, Bell says this is ok, and that it doesn't matter.

Implications - A painting without compelling Form won't evoke Aesthetic Emotion. It's possible for a painting to NOT be art. Bell calls these "Illustrations." Ex. _Paddington Station_ and _The Doctor_ have no aesthetic emotion and are only illustrations of common llife. However, _Marriage _by Perugino is art because it is Formally correct and so produces aesthetic emotion, regardless if it has to do with marriage.

Roger Fry - A Formalist art critic

Fry studied the works of Breughel, Damier, Poussin, and Rembrandt. Breughel and Damier are of the 1800s, and Poussin and Rembrandt from the Renaissance.

Fry analyzed a frenetic, overly stimulating/detailed scene of Christ carrying the cross to Golgotha by Breughel called incidentally _Carry_, but it's such a jumble on the canvas of dozens of people in random places that it's aesthetically unpleasing despite its subject matter and whatever facial expressions are on the faces. Hence, it's just illustration and not art.
Daumier made a painting called _St. Lazare Station_ that is more than just an illustration according to Fry because there is obscurity of meaning behind certain figures in the scene, i.e. people in shadows, the gestures that people are making, the use of columns and diagonal lines, etc. so he considered this one work because it inspired curiosity/interest.
Poussin made a wonderful painting titled _Achilles_, which has characters well painted and interestingly placed in the scene. There is a 3-dimensional element. Fry considers this work however as a weak example of art because although it Formally is pretty correct, it doesn't succeed in evoke that much aesthetic emotion. The effect is too dainty/pretty instead of curiosity-inspiring.
Rembrandt's painting of the court of Pontius Pilate also has a psychologically compelling element because of how the Pharisees are gesturing towards Pilate, but Fry looks more at where everything is placed on the canvas. He spies some dis-harmonies such as unnecessary sculptures and too much red. Fry makes a point that the psychological element here is still great enough to produce aesthetic emotion of some degree.

So now you have a little bit idea of what Formalism is! Let's bring this to our medium, shall we?

Why was Shostakovich called a Formalist, and why did the USSR hate Formalism so much? First, Formalism was considered an elitist philosophy which the common people don't agree with, and since it negated the importance of content, it basically condemned all sorts of representation. The USSR was bent on making representational, traditional art the normal art, because that's what the _people _create, not elitists. If you think about it, they were sorta correct, because for an art critic to ignore a good message or story within a painting is a grievous deed, especially since that can be what draws ordinary people to it. Shostakovich's use of dissonances was interpreted as him saying "I don't care what impact the dissonances make on my audience as long as it is well written intellectually" because in order to make good Formalist art, you can have perfect Forms but the content could be ridiculous, repulsive, and not signify anything. The Lady Macbeth opera would be the example of content that "should have had different music as related to the content" but Shostakovich chose to be dissonant because it Formally was correct and well-written. "Recherche" dissonance wasn't considered an artistic property of the people. If this is all true, then the USSR was right in their intentions, and if Shostakovich actually WAS a Formalist, that _would _have been a bad thing. Almost nobody in contemporary theory today support the idea of Formalism because it limits conceptual art. I have no idea what Shostakovich's aesthetic philosophies were, but I think he was more on the side of using dissonance for impact, as its own kind of content which is relevant to psychological elements in music. I don't think he was a true Formalist, and believed that his music should be viewed just like any other accessible music. Shostakovich is pretty accessible from our contemporary perspective today anyhow.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Dewey - Experientialist

Dewey believed that all art was "an experience" difference from the regular "experience." It is a specific space in time with a unified beginning, middle, and end and produces aesthetic emotion. The end is the result of a solution, not an abrupt cut-off. It's an interaction of a person with their environment, and is not simply any moment in life. Anything autonomously controlled or too much in loose succession is not aesthetic.

Doing vs. Undergoing: Doing is to alter one's environment, and Undergoing is to react to that change.

When an artist creates, they are continuously moving between doing and undergoing as the paint and then look at what they have painted. The best art is that which was properly balanced between doing and undergoing. Production and Evaluation go hand in hand.

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Heidigger - Phenomenology

Heidigger believed the purpose of Art was to reveal Truth and to make a "world" come into existence (i.e. a world previously overlooked).

Three types of things: Mere things (raw material like rocks, water, etc.), Tools/Artifacts (man-made, utilitarian things), and Art (man-made through tools but not for utilitarian purpose)

Two modes of being: Ready-to-hand means attached examination (object in use)
Present-to-hand means detached examination (object not in use)

The artist's role is to open up a "world" by taking a ready-to-hand thing and turn it into a present-to-hand thing.

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Beardsley - Creation of Art

The creative process:

1. Incept (emotion, image, idea) makes its way into the mind of the artist
2. Realization of Incept by artist
3. Evaluation of Realization "X"
4. Change of X in light of evaluation results in X'
5. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until finished/satisfied

There is no "propulsive" or "finalistic" element necessarily. The artist is free not to be under stress of unexpressed emotion, and also not to stick to a final end for the finished product. Take for example works that originally began as one thing and then transformed into another (happened with some composer who originally wrote for the piano and then turned those works into orchestrated pieces).

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Sibley

Terms:
- metaphors (sad, happy, etc.)
- original terms (delicate, elegant)
- dead metaphors (balanced)

Taste requires more than the 5 senses. It takes sensibility and inferential analysis

Aesthetic terms are _not _conditioned-governed. They are only to be made through perception/inference, not causal relations. Forms can have strict definitions (ex. Square, Circle), but not ideas for ex. personalities, psychological features. Thus, aesthetic terms can never be secured by any set number of features.
Sibley said that perhaps negative conditioning could be allowed, but later theorists believe he should have left that out, that neither positive nor negative terms are condition governed.

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Walton

Categorizing aesthetic properties - you can assess things from a frame of mind, i.e. viewing something from its right genre.

Resemblance vs. Representation - Resemblance is what something _literally _is (ex. a painting is flat and square), but Representation is what the artwork becomes when viewed in its genre (ex. a painting becomes what's in the illustration)

Gestalt - form, more than the sum of its parts, i.e. interpretation of resemblance

Terms for assessment:
Standard - trait is necessary for putting artwork in that category
Variable - trait is unnecessary or doesn't reinforce/challenge artwork's categorization
Contra-Standard - trait causes doubt about artwork's perception as a certain genre (ex. a painting with a hole in it).

Most successful/correct aesthetic experience - perceive the work of art in the right category, but seeing it in the category which makes the artwork have the most Standard traits, as well as perceiving it in its proper culture/society context, and how it was made.

Therefore, everything has the possibility of becoming Art!

Open Art Theory - creation of new art forms won't disrupt the canon of art forms, because genre doesn't add or detract from Art as a concept.

Art Family Resemblance - a heritage, a history, and non-exhibited properties. _Relational_.


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