Distinguishing between good and bad and making critical evaluations are a part of everyday life. We do it consciously and sub-consciously and not just with art. This lecture obviously focuses upon how and why we do it when it comes to art...
Good taste/bad taste
Aesthetics
Judgements/criticism
Value
Art!
*Jack Vettriano
-His prints are huge sellers.
-Refused to be accepted as an 'artist' by the Tate Britain. They refused to allow him to exhibit his work there- too commercial.
The Singing Butler.
*Aesthetics
What is beautiful? Beauty is an idea.
-18th century philosophers of aesthetics realised that beauty was almost an 'idea' that you brought to something. Not just the idea that an object is beautiful, e.g. a rose is beautiful, nature at it's best and everyone will see that, but instead grew to understand 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'. It is a personal opinion and is subjective.
-David Hume recognised we needed something to value the judgment of beauty against. A certain kind of person who is 'aesthetically tuned', or a conecuir become the people who set the criteria of taste. Typical of the time period those 'aesthetically tuned' came from the privileged class of people, so the upper classes deemed what was actually beautiful.
-Obviously richer people had the time to think about beauty.
-This helped create further devisions between the class.
*What is an aesthetic experience?
-Monroe Beardsley
-Acute attentiveness
(DISINTERESTEDNESS)- not brining any agenda, just focusing upon the beauty.
-intensity.
*Clive Bell
Significant Form
'The relations and combinations of lines and colours, which when organised give them power to move someone aesthetically.'
-Disliked artists who painted to show political scenes, give messages or show a narrative. He believed these were just social documents that did not capture beauty. E.g:
william powell frith derby day 1856-8
-He loved Cezanne.
cezanne mont sainte-victoire, 1900
He believed that if you were not moved by this painting than you weren't 'clever enough'. It hs been deemed beautiful by the elite, therefore if you don't feel moved you are not educated enough, you don't understand beauty.
*Art for Art's Sake
James Abbot McNeill Whistler
Nocturne in Black and Gold (1874-78)
-No subject, no message, just an attempt to create something beautiful, something aesthetic.
*The arts for arts sake dominated much thinking and practise in 20th century art.
*Clement Greenburg
-Figurehead behind the scenes of abstract expressionism. Said all art was leading up to Pollock, who he believed created art that was just an aesthetic experience. Just paint, no hidden message.
-He hated kitsch.
Pollock, Lavender Mist (1950)
*Dorothea Lange
Migrant Mother (1936)
-This was commissioned by the American government as part of a campaign to raise awareness and money. However, it is still viewed in galleries and given properties and views Lange might not have intended to have. Has reached a sort of high art status.
*What is Kitsch?
-For Greeenburg kitsch could be characterised as the various forms of popular culture.
-The more accurate definition is objects that aim and aspire to High Art or importance, but somehow fail and appear to popular culture instead.
-E.g. Constable Painting
-When hung in a gallery, it is definitely not kitsch, appears as classic painting. However, placed in a mock gold frame and hung in a run-down living room it becomes it! Aspiring for better things but falling short.
Monet on a mousemat= Very kitsch!
-Anything jumping across media. Painting or etchings turned into usable objects.
-Repainted masterpieces for the modern eye, simplification of style.
-There is something eternal and universal in beauty. If you choose to chase vogue style, and follow fashions, it quickly looks dated and becomes kitsch.
-As does anything over emotional, or cheesy
:D
-Animal themes. Truly kitsch as in many cases it aims to be taken seriously as fine art.
Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles the Monkey (1988)
-Making a gesture to challenge the arbiters of taste, is this not art now it is in a gallery?!
Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge: La Goulue, 1891
-Even though he was working to a brief, and most of his work was commercial, it is still considered art. So there are exceptions.
*Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light. My new hero...
-He claims to be "America's most-collected living artist". Media Arts Group-- the former publicly traded company that licensed, distributed and sold Kinkade's products-- claimed that 1 in 20 homes in the U.S. feature some form of Thomas Kinkade's art.
Kinkade has received criticism for the extent to which he has commercialised his art—for example, selling his prints on the QVC home shopping network. Others have written that his paintings are merely kitsch, without substance, and have described them as chocolate box art and "mall art."
*Modes of Criticism.
-Subjectivism
-Relativism (criterion based)
*George Dickie, An Introduction to Aesthetics, 1971
*The criteria needed to evaluate objects really changes, evaluating good and bad holds a number of problems.
-Reativism is the best way to make judgments. R.M. Hare's argues that moral propositions remain subject to human logical rules, notwithstanding the absence of any factual content, including those subject to cultural or religious standards or norms.
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