The Art Instinct

[caroljane]

Sorry for the rambly post but it has been raining here for two weeks (hampering my recent enforced enjoyment of nature) and my brain is rusty.

Carol,

Well, of course it is - hasn't been getting its regular OiLing, has it?

(Have to crack up at my own silly jokes.)

I enjoy devious novelists, who cleverly "hide in plain sight".*

There is a line that can be crossed into sheer obfuscation, I'd think, though.

Poetry sometimes does that to me - and I end up frustrated at my denseness to understand it.

The individualism quote was from a woman writer I hadn't heard of - and I wish I'd noted her name at the time.

*(I've had the passing thought that Rand's novels were written with such unambiguous clarity, that may have contributed to drawing negative literary criticism to her. Do we expect an amount of ambiguity in novels?)

Yes, btw, Roth's self-indulgence still did offer something valuable to me.

Nice to see you again.

Tony

And to see you. I especially missed your silly jokes and feared you may have gone all sensible without my bad influence.

Understanding poetry -- here I know I'm wrenching the discussion from its foundation which was about visual art and then literature. Poetry can only be understood in the way music is -- ie, it can't. It can only be felt, recognized, like music from which it was for millennia indivisible. Nothing is easier to understand than the structure of words or musical notation. But nothing is harder to explain than their effect. Ayn Rand struggled mightily to wrestle music into her aesthetic corral and was honest about the difficulties of doing so. I don't know if she had anything to say about poetry -- I hope not.

It is Victoria Day here and I am revelling in Gilbert & Sulllivan, Rule Britannia, etc on the radio, cutting off the crusts of my tomato sandwiches (I'm out of cucumber) and clinking a teacup southeastwards. Hear it?

Carol

Relubing nicely

[anthony]

Yes, tomato will do in a pinch. Existing in the corners of the Empire forces deprivation and compromise upon many, I appreciate.

"Serious?" Yup - haven't been able to cure myself of that one, I'm afraid to say.

Clink away; I might just have a cuppa to join you.

[caroljane]

Yes, tomato will do in a pinch. Existing in the corners of the Empire forces deprivation and compromise upon many, I appreciate.

"Serious?" Yup - haven't been able to cure myself of that one, I'm afraid to say.

Clink away; I might just have a cuppa to join you.

Dear Tony - I said "sensible" not "serious'. I would never want you to not be serious, you would not be Tony without it, indeed nobody can be themselves if they are not serious about serious things. Even I am fundamentally serious though I admit it doesn't show much.

But sensible , as in common sense, I have an unreasonable prejudice against for various reasons, the main one being that I have very little of it myself. I certainly divert from the sensible to the silly more often than I probably should, but I do it for selfish reasons of enjoyment, and if that doesn't make sense to anybody, well, it doesn't to me either really, if I had to think about it.

But I don't have to.

Still not sharpest knife in drawer due to residual rust,

Carol

[Guyau]

~Coming in December~

Defining Art, Creating the Canon

Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt

Paul Crowther (Oxford 2011)

From the publisher:

What is art; why should we value it; and what allows us to say that one work is better than another?

Traditional answers have emphasized aesthetic form. But this has been challenged by institutional definitions of art and postmodern critique. The idea of distinctively artistic value based on aesthetic criteria is at best doubted, and at worst, rejected. This book, however, champions the traditional notions. It restores the mimetic definition of art on the basis of factors which traditional answers neglect, namely the conceptual link between art's aesthetic value and 'non-exhibited' epistemological and historical relations.

These factors converge on an expanded notion of the artistic image (a notion which can even encompass music, abstract art, and some conceptual idioms). The image's style serves to interpret its subject-matter. If this style is original (in comparative historical terms) it can manifest that special kind of aesthetic unity which we call art. Appreciation of this involves a heightened interaction of capacities (such as imagination and understanding) which are basic to knowledge and personal identity. By negotiating these factors, it is possible to define art and its canonic dimensions objectively, and to show that aforementioned sceptical alternatives are incomplete and self-contradictory.

~Previous and Related~

Here is a charming look by David MacLagan into The Art Instinct.

Remarks of Mohan Matthen . . . are here.

. . .

The Art Instinct

Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution

Denis Dutton (2009)

Introduction


1: Landscape and Longing


2: Art and Human Nature


3: What Is Art?

4: "But They Don't Have Our Concept of Art"


5: Art and Natural Selection


6: The Uses of Fiction


7: Art and Human Self-Domestication


8: Intention, Forgery, Dada: Three Aesthetic Problems


9: The Contingency of Aesthetic Values


10: Greatness in the Arts

. . .

[BaalChatzaf]

On the left, plants. And some of them rather pretty.

Ba'al Chatzaf

And on the right, abstracts which resemble their counter parts on the left.

Rather witty, I would say. I bit of mental fun.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Guyau]

~Coming in December~

Defining Art, Creating the Canon

Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt

Paul Crowther (Oxford 2011)

From the publisher:

What is art; why should we value it; and what allows us to say that one work is better than another?

Traditional answers have emphasized aesthetic form. But this has been challenged by institutional definitions of art and postmodern critique. The idea of distinctively artistic value based on aesthetic criteria is at best doubted, and at worst, rejected. This book, however, champions the traditional notions. It restores the mimetic definition of art on the basis of factors which traditional answers neglect, namely the conceptual link between art's aesthetic value and 'non-exhibited' epistemological and historical relations.

These factors converge on an expanded notion of the artistic image (a notion which can even encompass music, abstract art, and some conceptual idioms). The image's style serves to interpret its subject-matter. If this style is original (in comparative historical terms) it can manifest that special kind of aesthetic unity which we call art. Appreciation of this involves a heightened interaction of capacities (such as imagination and understanding) which are basic to knowledge and personal identity. By negotiating these factors, it is possible to define art and its canonic dimensions objectively, and to show that aforementioned sceptical alternatives are incomplete and self-contradictory.

Jonathan claims in advance against any such work as Crowther 2011. He knows, against any possibility of such a counterexample, of the “aesthetic ineptitude in those who insist on telling everyone else what is or is not art.”*

I plan to order this book and study it. My special interest is in Prof. Crowther’s remodeled mimetic definition of art and how it squares with the rejection and replacement, by Roger and Rand, of traditional mimetic conceptions of art. I’ll try to comment on this book in Roger’s Corner.

Abstract of Roger's 1997 “The Essence of Art” in Objectivity:*

This is a defense and elaboration of the theoretical definition of art proposed by Rand, which was that art is a selective re-creation of reality in accordance with the creator’s metaphysical value judgments. Bissell articulates the relation of this modern theory to the older theory of art as an imitation of nature. In different ways, he argues, they both treat art as an imaginary microcosm. He discusses relationships between linguistic symbols and artistic symbols in human cognition.

[Jonathan]

Jonathan claims in advance against any such work as Crowther 2011.

I make no such claims in advance. My criticisms of Roger's attempts to establish his own aesthetic tastes, interpretations, abilities and limitations as the One Objective Truth and as the Universal Standard For All Mankind apply only to Roger. I would not make such a judgment of Crowther, or of anyone else, unless and until I had seen him attempting to smuggle in his own aesthetic responses as the universal standard, and to deny others' responses or to claim that they're indicative of psychological defects.

He knows, against any possibility of such a counterexample, of the “aesthetic ineptitude in those who insist on telling everyone else what is or is not art.”*

I don't assume aesthetic ineptitude in anyone. I just don't accept people's arbitrary denials of others' aesthetic responses, or their attempts to label others as being dishonest or psychologically defective when they report that they experience art differently than certain Objectivist aesthetic-authority-wannabes.

Did you happen to notice that the publisher's description that you posted mentioned Crowther's "expanded notion of the artistic image" which "can even encompass music, abstract art, and some conceptual idioms"? In other words, if I'm understanding the comment correctly, it appears that Crowther does not share Roger's limitations and opinions when it comes to visual art, but instead is capable of recognizing the expressiveness of abstract art, and is perhaps capable of seeing its similarity to music and architecture. If these are indeed Crowther's views, it would be Roger whom you should accuse of making "claims in advance against any such work as Crowther 2011," but not because of Crowther's being "aesthetically inept," but because of his daring to be so "insulting" as to claim to experience in certain art forms what Roger does not, and therefore revealing that he is a delusional rationalizer who is in denial by Roger's standards.

J

[Jonathan]

A quick Google search on Crowther reveals that he appears to have had quite a lot to say about his views on abstract art as a valid art form. So, oops, Stephen, it looks as if you may have really jumped the gun with your maliciously snarky little post. Heh. From what I've briefly read now of Crowther, it appears that his views might be very similar to mine in many respects. Jesus. Maybe next time you should actually read and fully understand any book that you're hoping to use as a weapon here? It seems to kind of defeat the purpose if you end up trying to oppose my views with resources which inadvertently support my views, no? It comes across as silly and petty.

J

[Guyau]

Concerning a claim by Peikoff in The DIM Hypothesis:

. . .

The claim that Kant is "generally recognized" to be the father of Modernist art is laughable. In fact, I think that no one other than Rand, Peikoff and few of her other followers believe that to be true.

. . .

J

Clement Greenberg is the only one I have come across, in a quick survey, who makes some connection, possibly paternity, between Kant and modern art.* It is unclear to me so far what sorts of connection he made. Specifically, how far are the connections causal? Did he claim that Kant was not an influence on modern art, but framed the ideas with which modern art should be understood? With respect to Kant’s theoretical philosophy, I gather from Crowther* that the connection made by Greenberg may have been only the connection of analogy. The following has some leads to the literature.

Art, Nature, and "Greenberg's Kant"

Suma Rajiva

[Jonathan]

Hi Stephen,

I've addressed the Greenberg/Kant issue here:

In the above, Greenberg is not crediting the content of Kant's ideas on aesthetics as influencing him, but is taking Kant's method of approaching all of philosophy as being the model that he, personally, took as his model of thought.

If one is going to use Greenberg's comment to support the claim that Kant was the father of Modern art, one could use a similar means to declare that Rand was the mother of Postmodern art: Rand's approach to philosophy was to question the premises of everything, and to challenge cherished beliefs and traditions. Postmodernist artists also take the approach of questioning the premises of everything, and to challenge cherished beliefs and traditions. Therefore I conceive of Rand as the first real Postmodernist. QED.

In the same post, I also addressed the fact that certain Objectivists seem to be unaware of the difference between their use of term "Modern art" (which to them basically means abstract art) and scholars' use of the term "modern aesthetics" (by which they mean a method of thinking about the philosophy of aesthetics in the time period beginning with Romanticism). As I wrote in that post:

I hope that Hicks is not so unfamiliar with art history that he doesn't yet realize that there's a difference between what he means by "modern art" (as well as what Rand meant by it) and what others can mean by "modern aesthetics." Does Hicks not know that the terms "the modern world" in the arts, "The Age of Revolution," and "modern aesthetics" generally refer to the time period beginning with Romanticism, and that the people he quotes above may be talking about that period?

In saying that without Kant, aesthetics would not exist in its modern form, they might also mean that Rand's aesthetics would not exist as she presented them -- she would not have been influenced by the brand of Romanticism and the approach to aesthetic thinking that Kant influenced.

As I said in that post, no one has denied that there may be connections between Kant and many different artists and movements. What's being denied is that Kant was the cause (or "father) of Modern art and/or Postmodern art. There is more evidence to support the claim that Kant was the "father" of Romanticism, and, more importantly, of Rand's art and her specific aesthetic "sense of life."

J

[Guyau]

To the works in #154, I add these two which look interesting:

Work and Object

Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art

Peter Lamarque (2010)

Force

A Fundamental Concept of Aesthetic Anthropology

Christoph Menke (2012)

[Guyau]

.

The Arts, Emotion, and Evolution

Noël Carroll

The Artful Species

Stephen Davies (Oxford 2013)

[Guyau]

.

Creativity and Art: Three Roads to Surprise

Margaret A. Boden (2011, paperback next month)

[Guyau]

What Art Is – The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand (2000), by L. Torres and M. Kamhi, defends Rand’s definition of art as “a selective re-creation of reality according to the artist’s metaphysical value judgments.” One of the authors Kamhi argues it is better to replace “according to the artist’s metaphysical value judgments” in that definition of art with “according to the artist’s fundamental view of life, which includes his deepest values.” In either case, much not obvious has to be packed into both the genus and species of those definitions to actually corral only the artifacts the definers mean by art.

My own definition of art, as I have it so far, leaves less for unpacking and is more inclusive in its target art: “selective re-creation of reality showing concretely the notable and meaningful (sometimes metaphysical value-standings) through craft of parts integrated into a unified whole conducive to contemplation for its own sake” (4/13).

One neat challenge for my definition would be to determine whether it includes Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box. Arthur Danto has a photo of a contemporary fabrication alluding to Brillo Box as image on the cover of his new book What Art Is (2013). Torres and Kamhi had argued the defectiveness of various definitions of art in the latter half of the twentieth century. They quoted Danto saying against all possible definitions of art, and they displayed some of his praise for Warhol. I find no citation for the Danto remark against defining art, but anyway it is evidently not his considered view. In his new book, he argues for the definition that art is embodied meaning connecting to cognizance of what is possible (154–55).

Dagny’s solitary meditation alongside the diesel electric power plant of the locomotive would seem to qualify the machine as art under that definition, but of course, there is unpacking to be done in Danto’s definition that can narrow the class included under the definition. “The embodiment of ideas or, I would say, of meanings is perhaps all we require as a philosophical theory of what art is. But doing the criticism that consists in finding the way the idea is embodied varies from work to work” (128).

Danto intends his definition to capture all of and only what is common and distinctive of art from the primitive to Leonardo to Warhol. Danto argues an idea and its way of embodiment for Brillo Box that stand it up as art. I worry there are other stories that can be told of the artifact Brillo Box, according with what it presents, perhaps stories too different to stand it under a single definite embodied idea or under a single idea-family. But perhaps such looseness or instability, if demonstrated, would elevate rather than dissolve its standing as art in the view of Danto.

Torres and Kamhi appeal to Warhol’s own reports about his creations and his mindset concerning those creations. They appeal to those reports as a trump over any stories formulated merely consistent with the product before the viewer. In my view, the visual artist’s reports of his or her intention is only one story to be considered for match with the product, and this is concordant with my definition of art.

[Jonathan]

What Art Is – The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand (2000), by L. Torres and M. Kamhi, defends Rand’s definition of art as “a selective re-creation of reality according to the artist’s metaphysical value judgments.” One of the authors Kamhi argues it is better to replace “according to the artist’s metaphysical value judgments” in that definition of art with “according to the artist’s fundamental view of life, which includes his deepest values.” In either case, much not obvious has to be packed into both the genus and species of those definitions to actually corral only the artifacts the definers mean by art.

Rand and Kamhi and Torres came up with definitions based on what they, personally, liked to see in art, rather than on what art can be. Art isn't limited to "fundamental views," "deepest values," or "metaphysical value judgments." I think a better definition -- one not tainted by their subjective preferences -- would simply identify the fact that the artist's ideas and expressions are those that he or she considers to be, at the very least, worthy of contemplating. There's no reason that any and all ideas expressed in art have to be a condensation or representation of an entire philosophy or comprehensive view of existence.

My own definition of art, as I have it so far, leaves less for unpacking and is more inclusive in its target art: “selective re-creation of reality showing concretely the notable and meaningful (sometimes metaphysical value-standings) through craft of parts integrated into a unified whole conducive to contemplation for its own sake” (4/13).

The term "selective re-creation of reality" is also problematic and insufficient. Not all art "re-creates reality" -- music, architecture, and dance being great examples. I think a better choice of terms would be that art simulates/stimulates -- it simulates some aspect of reality and/or stimulates associations with some aspects of reality.

One neat challenge for my definition would be to determine whether it includes Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box. Arthur Danto has a photo of a contemporary fabrication alluding to Brillo Box as image on the cover of his new book What Art Is (2013). Torres and Kamhi had argued the defectiveness of various definitions of art in the latter half of the twentieth century. They quoted Danto saying against all possible definitions of art, and they displayed some of his praise for Warhol.

Kamhi and Torres -- especially Torres -- can be smug little art-police wannabes, and seem to be immune to considering any knowledge or evidence which refutes their uninformed opinions. I've tried several times to inform Torres, in different public forums (the comments section of WSJ online, for example), of his technical ignorance of photography and its history and uses, of his double standards when it comes to his accepting music as a valid art form, and of his arbitrary and selective applications of his own criteria to judging various works of art, among other issues, but he ignores criticism, blank-outs the information that blows his positions out of the water, and he just continues riding his hobby horse of telling everyone what doesn't qualify as art as if nothing happened.

Warhol's Brillos qualify as a work of art by Rand's definition, despite Kamhi and Torres' not wanting them to. They are identifiable re-creations of objects from reality, and they reflect Warhol's "metaphysical value-judgments," despite Kamhi and Torres' refusal to interpret his intentions as representing his metaphysical value-judgments. Warhol's creating Brillo boxes made of wood is no different than Michelangelo creating a man made of marble.

It's endlessly amusing to me that who the artist is is actually the criterion that Objectivists use in deciding what is art and what is not, as well as in determining which objects may be "re-created" in a work of art and which may not. Somehow, if an Objectivist artist paints an image of stones (identifiable objects in reality), it is art, but if a non-Objectivist artist paints an image of colorful tiles (identifiable objects in reality), it is magically not art. If an Objectivist artist were to create a painted bronze sculpture of a wine barrel, it would be considered art, but if non-Objectivist Andy Warhol creates wooden sculptures of Brillo boxes, for some unidentified reason, it is said to not be art. Complete irrationality.

Torres and Kamhi appeal to Warhol’s own reports about his creations and his mindset concerning those creations. They appeal to those reports as a trump over any stories formulated merely consistent with the product before the viewer. In my view, the visual artist’s reports of his or her intention is only one story to be considered for match with the product, and this is concordant with my definition of art.

What Kamhi and Torres don't do is apply their own means of attacking the artists that they don't like to the artists that they do like. Almost nothing would qualify as art if their tactics were to be applied to all artists consistently. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we could easily find a way to use their methods to make Rand's novels not qualify as art.

J

[BaalChatzaf]

This looks intriguing.

The Art Instinct

Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution

Denis Dutton (2009)

Introduction


1: Landscape and Longing


2: Art and Human Nature


3: What Is Art?

4: "But They Don't Have Our Concept of Art"


5: Art and Natural Selection


6: The Uses of Fiction


7: Art and Human Self-Domestication


8: Intention, Forgery, Dada: Three Aesthetic Problems


9: The Contingency of Aesthetic Values


10: Greatness in the Arts

This book will be the topic of an Author-Meets-Critics session of the Central Division Meeeting of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago (Feb. 17–20, 2010) at The Palmer House. The session will be 1:45–4:45pm, on Feb. 17. The Critics will be:

Mohan Matthen

Robert C. Richardson

William P. Seeley

Art is invented or learned. It is not wired in genetically.

Homo sapien came about 200,000 years ago, but the first sign of art was about 30,000 years ago. If art were instinctive it would not have had to wait 170,000 years.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[moralist]

Because I'm not an intellectual, to me art is simply a message.

Greg

[Guyau]

Greg,

I agree that art is something like a message. But its message or meaning is bound up in an experience the artwork evokes in the viewer or listener. Analyzing how that kind of shared intelligence and feeling works is the fun of the philosophy of art. Science is helping to understand this aspect of us also.

[Guyau]

Follow-on to 164, 165.

Arthur Danto in What Art Is, on Brillo Box as art:

I have said at times that if the indiscernible objects—Brillo Box and the Brillo carton—were perceptually alike, they must be aesthetically alike as well, but I no longer believe this true, mainly because of having brought some better philosophy to bear on the issue. But this, as you will see, makes the issue of aesthetics more irrelevant than ever.

Let us attempt to distinguish between artworks and objects—Brillo Box, for example, and the particular stenciled plywood box in which any given token of the work consists. There were, perhaps, three hundred such tokens created in 1964, and a hundred or so more in 1970. The curator Pontus Hultén had approximately one hundred so-called Stockholm-type Brillo boxes made in 1990 after Warhol’s death, but their status as art is pretty moot since they were fakes, as were the certificates of authenticity that Hultén had forged. It somewhat complicates the indiscernibility relationship that holds between the tokens that are art and the ordinary Brillo cartons, which happen to be tokens of a different artwork, namely a piece of commercial art. Warhol’s boxes were fabricated for the Factory at 231 East Forty-seventh Street in Manhattan; underpainted in Liquitex by Gerard Malanga and Billy Linich; and then stenciled, using the techniques of photographic silkscreen, to look like grocery boxes. Warhol’s grocery boxes—there were about six kinds in the Stable show—were what Malanga called “three-dimensional photographs.” Meanwhile, there were many thousands of tokens of the cardboard Brillo carton, shaped and printed in various box factories (probably) in the United States over a period of time. Both of the boxes, one fine and the other commercial art, are parts of visual culture, without this in any way blurring the difference between fine and commercial art. We know who the commercial artist was—James Harvey . . . . Now Harvey’s work was appropriated by Warhol, along with the works of various other package designers in the 1964 exhibition at the Staple Gallery . . . . But the only box that is generally remembered is Brillo Box—it was the star of the show . . . . And this is because of its aesthetic excellence. Its red, white, and blue design was a knockout. As a piece of visual rhetoric, it celebrated its content Brillo, as a household product used for shining aluminum. The box was about Brillo, and the aesthetics of the box was calculated to dispose viewers favorably towards Brillo. Warhol, however, gets no credit for the aesthetics for which Harvey was responsible. That is the aesthetics of the box, but whether or not that esthetics is part of Warhol’s work is another question altogether. It is true that Warhol chose the Brillo carton for Brillo Box. . . . The truth is, however, that I don’t know what, if any, aesthetic properties belong to Warhol’s Brillo Box itself. . . . Warhol’s box was a piece of Pop art, so called because it was about the images of popular culture. Harvey’s box was part of popular culture, but it was not a piece of Pop art because it was not about popular culture at all. Harvey created a design that obviously appealed to popular sensibilities. Warhol brought those sensibilities to consciousness. Warhol was a very popular artist because people felt his art was about them. But Harvey’s box was not about them. It was about Brillo, which belonged to their world, since shining aluminum belonged to the aesthetics of everyday domestic existence.

. . . Hegel drew a distinction between two kinds of what he termed spirit: objective spirit and absolute spirit. Objective spirit consists of all those things and practices in which we find the mind of a culture made objective: its language, its architecture, its books and garments and cuisine, its rituals and laws . . . . Absolute spirit is about us, whose spirit is merely present in the things that make up our objective spirit. Harvey’s boxes belong to the objective spirit of the United States circa 1960. So in a way do Warhol’s boxes. But Warhol’s boxes, being about objective spirit, are absolute: they bring objective spirit to consciousness of itself. Self-consciousness is the great attribute of absolute spirit, of which, Hegel felt, fine art, philosophy, and religion are the chief and perhaps the only moments. (2013, 146–49)

I’d of made a Brillo Box out of aluminum with Harvey’s commercial art applied to its faces and with all exposed aluminum framing of his panels highly polished.* The viewer could see herself. Those of us who stand by the power plant of a diesel-electric locomotive and say of its creators “yours is the kind of mind I worship” might well smile at such an unclouded Brillo Box. And Danto would easily discern what esthetic elements belonged to this box itself, beyond the elements from Harvey.

PS

The fact that this imaginary version of Brillo Box is such a better fit with the Hegelian modernist analysis Danto gives to Warhol's actual version, yet the two boxes are so different, suggests that Danto's analysis (and defense) of Warhol's Brillo Box is weak. At least Danto makes a sincere try in this analysis and gives definition of art a sincere try in What Art Is, which is a pleasure to read.

[Roger Bissell]

Replying to Ba'al...

Just as the first language was spoken, not written, the first art was performance art -- storytelling, dancing, music -- not paintings or statues or architecture.

I don't think that performance art "waited" 170,000 years, any more than spoken language did. It was probably part and parcel of the evolutionary leap to conceptual/homo sapiens functioning.

Detached symbols are an advanced invention, whether cave art or written language. Even so, I think that it probably appeared sooner than 30,000 years ago.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

REB

[Jonathan]

Detached symbols are an advanced invention, whether cave art or written language. Even so, I think that it probably appeared sooner than 30,000 years ago.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

That's especially true of visual art. Drawings and paintings are usually pretty fragile. The fact that we've found them on cave walls doesn't mean that they were not produced outside of caves prior to 30,000 years ago. We have no idea how long ago people could have been painting on skins, rocks, trees, and even themselves, since any art that they did create would have surrendered to the elements relatively quickly. It would be quite rare for someone from that time period to just happen to paint on a surface which would never be exposed to destructive conditions over a span of tens of thousands of years.

J

[Jonathan]

I’d of made a Brillo Box out of aluminum with Harvey’s commercial art applied to its faces and with all exposed aluminum framing of his panels highly polished. The viewer could see herself. Those of us who stand by the power plant of a diesel-electric locomotive and say of its creators “yours is the kind of mind I worship” might well smile at such an unclouded Brillo Box. And Danto would easily discern what esthetic elements belonged to this box itself, beyond the elements from Harvey.

I would have been a little more subtle. I would have ever-so-slightly enhanced Harvey's design so that it was different enough from the original that non-artists, including Danto, could vaguely sense that it seemed to be somehow more attractive, but couldn't quite put their fingers on how or why. In other words, I would have refined the color choices, compositional balance and proportions just enough to make the design as much of a romanticized representation of Harvey's design as a painting or sculpture of a real person is a romanticized representation of the person. I'd follow Rand's comments on painting an apple and achieving a "heightened reality which neither their real-life models nor any color photograph can match."

J

[BaalChatzaf]

Replying to Ba'al...

Just as the first language was spoken, not written, the first art was performance art -- storytelling, dancing, music -- not paintings or statues or architecture.

I had not considered the possibility you mentioned. Thank you for the insight.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[moralist]

Greg,

I agree that art is something like a message. But its message or meaning is bound up in an experience the artwork evokes in the viewer or listener.

It does indeed. And the message conveyed by experience is contingent upon the view of the recipient. As people with two different views each receive the same message, but through different experiences. For one view it can inspire praise, while for another it can evoke revulsion. Art, like all truth, is a double edged sword which cuts two ways.

Analyzing how that kind of shared intelligence and feeling works is the fun of the philosophy of art. Science is helping to understand this aspect of us also.

...as do moral values. For also contained within every message of art are the values of the artist.

Greg

[Newberry]

Hence my posting the hypnotic animated liquid surface which works in a way similar to music but on the visual center of the brain.

What is going on here is a complex visual pattern which the mind processes automatically without conceptual level processing. It entrains the mind producing, in this case, a very mildly pleasurable hynoptic effect. Other similar visual experiences are kaleidoscopes, fire works displays, complexly choreographed dances, and domino chains, all of which enthrall audiences and cause spontaneous applause.

Very interesting, a sense of rippling effect, including the other examples you give. Reminds me of MSK talking about passage of time in stories.