Thursday entry (for 4/1/10): Aesthetics in the Eye of the Beholder

Passages from Defining Art, Creating the Canon

Crowther, Paul. Defining Art, Creating the Canon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Page 68:

“Kant observes: ‘We can easily see that, in order for me to say that an object is beautiful, and to prove that I have taste, what matters is what I do with this presentation within myself, and not the [respect] in which I depend on the object’s existence.’

Kant’s point here, is that our pleasure in beauty (which he also describes as a mode of ‘pure aesthetic judgment’) is a function of how the object appears to the senses. What kind of thing the object is; its relevance for our practical interests; indeed, whether the object is real or not; are questions which have no necessary bearing on our enjoyment of its mere appearance. Through its rootedness in the immediate sensible particular our pleasure can be characterized as disinterested.

Disinterestedness is, on these terms, a logical characteristic which separates pure aesthetic judgments from those of the agreeable and the good. Pure aesthetic judgments are, in logical terms, indifferent to the real existence of the object.

It is, however, important to be clear about the scope and significance of this claim. In respect of it, Kant has been very badly served by subsequent tradition. As we have already seen in Chapter 1, formalists such as Monroe Beardsley and Clive Bell (and others who I have no previously mentioned, such as Edmund Bullough and Harold Osborne) have, in effect, interpreted the disinterested aspect of aesthetic judgment, as though it were in essence psychological – a kind of detached attitude or mental stance wherein one purges oneself of all considerations deriving from ‘real existence’. Many critics of disinterestedness such as George Dickie, Richard Shusterman, and manifold Marxist and feminists theoreticians, have interpreted it in similar terms.

This has led some of them to the view that there simply ‘aint no such thing’ or, indeed (in the case of Marxists), that the very idea of a detached ‘disinterested’ standpoint, is itself ideologically ‘interested’ to the highest degree.

Now there are elements in Kant – such as his additional characterization of the pure aesthetic judgment as ‘contemplative’ – which lend some weight to this interpretative tradition. These, however, pale into insignificance alongside Kant’s – wholly valid – logic of negation. The key logical significance of the pure aesthetic judgment lies in what it does not presuppose in order to be enjoyed.

To take a pleasure in the way things appear to the sense is just that. We may find that our being in a position to experience such pleasure has required a certain path through life; it may also be that lots of factual knowledge and practical considerations impinge upon our pleasure. However, such factors are not logical preconditions of our enjoying beauty: there are contingent elements. We do not have to take account of them in appreciating formal qualities for their own sake.

On these terms, then, the aesthetic experience of beauty is autonomous in logical terms. This is its definitive trait. However, such experiences occur under historically specific circumstances which means that their significance is mediated. By virtue of both the context in which it occurs and the kind of objects which bear it, beauty can be ethically and politically neutral or rendered negative or positive."

Monday entry (for 3/29/10): Artist of Interest: Nick Walker

Biography from Walker's official website:

In 1992 I began to combine stencils with my freehand work which allowed me to juxtapose almost photographic imagery with the rawness which evolved from conventional graffiti styles.

Stencils introduce an impact element to my work. The appeal of stencils is that they allow me to take an image from anywhere - dissect any part of life - and recreate it on any surface.

I try to add an element of humor or irony to some paintings to add a little light relief to the walls. Painting is a form of escapism for me and if my work allows the spectator to do the same thing, then I've achieved more than I set out to do.

Walker's official website.

Interview with Walker conducted by Juxtapoz magazine.

Walker's last solo exhibition was held at the Black Rat Press Gallery in London, England in April 2008.

The following images were found on Juxtapoz.com. Titles and medium of artworks were not available.

Thursday entry (for 3/25/10): Entertainment and Art continued

Passages from Beyond Price

Hutter, Michael, and David Throsby. Beyond Price: Value in Culture, Economics, and the Arts. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Page 41, essay by Richard Shusterman

“We often speak of the entertainment value of novels, plays, music, and other works of art. But cultural critics just as often contrast art to entertainment, viewing the former as culturally far superior in value. Is entertainment value an important part of art’s value or merely a subordinate, inessential means to conveying that value? Is it perhaps even an unwanted distraction from true artistic value?...Although the precise nature of aesthetic value is unclear and hotly contested, it is generally conceived as an intrinsic rather than an instrumental value. Entertainment, however, seems to imply instrumentality – a means of distracting, amusing, or refreshing oneself, or a way of enjoyably passing one’s time. So besides examining the concept of entertainment, I will also analyze the crucial but problematic notion of intrinsic value. This analysis will enable me to argue that intrinsic value can be reasonably construed in a way that allows a contextual contrast with instrumental value without presuming a radical dichotomy between them that would deny intrinsic value to things that clearly have instrumental value. Being instrumentally effective would not then automatically preclude entertainment value from being also an intrinsic value of art and aesthetic experience and would allow it to be considered a possible constituent of aesthetic value.

One prominent aspect of aesthetic value is its experiential quality. Such value does not lend itself to quantitative calculation or discursive proof but is realized or made evident in direct experience. It is in the experience of an appreciating subject that this value comes to life and is demonstrated; that is why aesthetic value is often described as being subjective in some sense, even when it is argued that such judgments also exhibit some objectivity of consensus and criteria of evaluation. In this sense of experiential value, it does not really make sense to speak of appreciating the aesthetic value of an artwork by merely having read or heard about it but without ever having experienced it, either in its original form or in an adequate reproducing. In the same way, entertainment value needs to be appreciated in direct and personal experience of the artwork enjoyed.

There are also other values that play an important role in evaluation of art, especially whenever we go beyond the specific aesthetic domain to consider the wider field of culture. We sometimes praise (or condemn) an artwork in terms of its social value – its effects in promoting social harmony or social progress. We also speak of the political value of art in similar terms. In the debates over the value of popular art, for example, there are arguments affirming its social and political value in terms of democratic expression, just as there are vehement allegations of its noxious social and political effects in terms of lowering of cultural standards and promotion of an unthinkingly conformist, mass mentality (Shusterman 1992, Ch. 7). Moreover, there are economic valuations of art that relate to sales and profit figures, and those that relate to issues of symbolic capital and status that are more difficult to quantify. To understand or appreciate such values it does not seem necessary to base one’s evaluation on vivid, direct experience of the artwork itself; one can instead concentrate on the work’s effects and relationships in the social, political, or economic fields in which it is situated.

These dimensions of valuing art most aestheticians regard as clearly extrinsic to genuine aesthetic value. But there are two other ways of valuing art that seem closer to the core notion of intrinsic aesthetic value but can still be distinguished form it: art-historical value and artistic value. The first relates to the contribution an artwork or genre has made to art history and cultural history. An artwork that no longer provides rewarding aesthetic experience to many people can still be widely hailed as artistically valuable because it earlier achieved classic status and thus forms an integral, inseparable part of an influential tradition that we still greatly value. The now unappealing classic thus remains highly valued for the still appealing tradition of works that it helped inspire. This value seems clearly relational – a function of the work’s place of role with respect to other works…

To have artistic, as distinguished from art-historical, value, an artwork need not be historically influential; it could simply demonstrate valuable qualities of technique in a given artistic genre. This sense of value hearkens back to the old general meaning of art as a specific skill or craft. A work might be aesthetically disappointing and fail to produce rewarding experience but still have the redeeming value of demonstrating some technical skill in the artistic medium. It is at least artistically valuable to that extent. One can imagine an aesthetically dismal portrait that nonetheless showed technical skill in drawing, or a note-perfect but unexpressive and uninspiring performance of a difficult musical work. If the technical skill demonstrated is innovative or impressive enough to be influential, then such artistic value could also constitute art-historical value. But even if we cannot speak of influence, artistic value seems clearly relational, since excellence of skill or technique make at least implicit reference to standards or paradigms of excellence that lie beyond the artwork itself. This, however, does not entail that artistic value is extrinsic rather than intrinsic, since the value is nonetheless embodied or expressed in the work itself rather than merely its external effects. As with aesthetic value, the proper appreciation of artistic value seems to require a direct experience of the work, though being told that a difficult musical performance was “note-perfect” may perhaps be enough for us to accord it some degree of artistic value without having heard it. Because of this common experiential anchorage (if not also for other reasons), artistic value and aesthetic value are more often run together than distinguished. “

Proof of Anderson Gallery student juried exhibition entry.

Monday entry (for 3/22/10): Artist of interest: Eelus

Biography from Eelus' official website:

Hello, I’m Eelus. People like me because I’m polite and rarely late.

My career as a graphic artist began when I was 10 years old in the ruthless, Thunderdome like playground of a Wigan primary school. Being quite handy with the old pencil, I decided to tool myself up and began knocking out hand drawn posters of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to either A: sell for tuck shop money or B: give away to escape a good kicking due to the shortness of my trousers.

Life continued, my trousers thankfully became longer and the kicking’s subsided, before I knew it 10 years had passed and I was now living in London. Wigan isn’t known for its street art, so when I arrived in London I was excited and inspired by the already booming scene. I bought the countless books, read the expensive imported magazines and after a few years of sitting on the sidelines like the school rugby games 10 years previous, I picked up a scalpel and decided to get involved. Before I knew it I was making a mess on walls as well as knocking out pieces on canvas to A: sell for beer money or B: give away to escape a good kicking due to the longness of my trousers.

In October 2006 I quit my day job and became a graphic artist full time, putting myself on a long road of experimentation, progression, hangovers and worrying about the rent. My goal is to push my limits, learn the skills of my trade and to hopefully continue to make a living from my art. This site is here to document that journey and give you the chance to buy any work I create on the way.

Eelus' official website.

Interview with Eelus conducted by Juxtapoz magazine.

Eelus recently had his work shown in his first London debut at Blackall Studios in London, England on February 25, 2010.

The following images were found on Eelus' official website.

Not Everything is so Black and White, spray paint on reclaimed wood

Lung Mixture on Metal, spray paint on vintage metal

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, spray paint on aluminium

I Said I'm Happy (What More Do You Want?), hand screen print on Arches Velin paper

Artist lecture: Megan Biddle 3/12/10

Megan Biddle is a young artist who creates sculptures and dabbles in drawing and film. She graduated from VCU with a MFA in 2005. In 2000 she received her undergrad from RISD. She's received many residencies and awards, the latest in 2009 include Sculpture Space Utica, NY. Artist in Residence, Creative Glass Center of America Millville, NJ. Artist in Residence, Jentel Artist Residency Program Banner, WY. Artist in Residence and The Macdowell Colony Peterborough, NH. Artist in Residence. She's also exhibited her work in several solo and group exhibitions, which include XO Projects Brooklyn NY. Site Specific Installation, The Old American Can Factory Brooklyn, NY. RISD NYC Alumni Biennial 2008, Long Island University Brooklyn, NY. Urban Glass Instructors and A.I.R. Gallery New York, NY. Generations 6.

Biddle gave a lecture in one of the critique rooms of the Fine Arts Building to a small group of students. It felt like a very intimate affair, unlike most of the artist lectures I've since attended here at VCU. Unfortunately, Biddle was a horrible public speaker, found herself unable to play her short films that were embedded into her Powerpoint presentation and rushed through all of her slides. The lecture was over within thirty-five minutes. In her presentation she included random photos of objects she found during her travels that inspired her, which seemed pointless given the fact that they weren't related to any of her completed artworks. I enjoyed a few of her sculptures and installations, including a wall full of melted wax paper that were hung with what appeared to be small rusty nails, but for the most part I felt she seemed more impressive on paper.

Artist lecture: Sanford Biggers 3/11/10

I immensely enjoyed Sanford Biggers' lecture. He was a great public speaker and was not only articulate but charming and witty as well. And he had the artwork to back him up. One piece that he showed that I was fond of the most was his film Small World, which depicted two different films playing side by side. One film was a continuous loop of old home movies shot by a middle class white family in Connecticut in the 1970s while the other film was also a continuous loop of old home movies but shot by a middle class black family in California, also in the 1970s. The home movies of the black family belonged to Biggers while the home movies of the white family belonged to a friend of his. The point of this joint film was to show the similarities, not differences, between the two families of different race across the country during the same time period. Biggers explained that for the installation of the film, the room was adorned with shag carpet and a comfy, worn in couch of the same time period to further escalate the ambiance of the setting and time period within the home movies.