Comparing Aesthete's Philosophical Approach To Art

Art, of all kinds, has played a role in our lives from the beginning of time and will continue to play a role in our lives and our emotions until the end of time. Works of art, from music to painting to dance to drama, all have the capabilities to bring out emotions of the people who view, hear or watch it. Many people get different emotions or feelings from different works of art, for example some people get a calming feelings from Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night while others get a feeling of a serious sadness due to the colors. Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and Clanet Monet all were great artist who all achieved a great deal of emotional appeal in their works of art.

As literary critics, Plato and Aristotle disagree profoundly about the value of art in human society. Plato attempts to strip artists of the power and prominence they enjoy in his society, while Aristotle tries to develop a method of inquiry to determine the merits of an individual work of art. It is interesting to note that these two disparate notions of art are based upon the same fundamental assumption: that art is a form of mimesis, imitation. Both philosophers are concerned with the artist's ability to have significant impact on others. It is the imitative function of art which promotes disdain in Plato and curiosity in Aristotle. Examining the reality that art

The extensive history of art as we know it draws back to the primitive cave drawings of our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago. Since then, it has evolved in a multitude of ways, taking on many different forms, mediums, and techniques. Art is a reflective work; in it we are able to find emotion, inner thought, life events, culture, nature, time periods, etc. Above all, this allows us to recognize the defining characteristics and methods that many artists employ to appeal to our senses. Heinrich Wolfflin, an art historian, went about categorizing art according to whether it appeals primarily to the emotion or to the intellect. By examining for such styles through their characteristics in the paintings The Madonna and Child with Saints Louis of Toulouse, John the Evangelist, and Donors by David Ghirlandaio and The Sinking of the Titanic by Max Beckmann, I was able to determine the former displays intellectual art and the latter displays emotional art.

In the current times the works of art often seem too abstract and unapproachable for an average receiver, and often the art pieces remain their meaning only within the context of art institutions, biennials and only the audience, who is already well informed on the subject of contemporary art practices. However I believe that it is essential for the art to become more approachable and influential for the wider audience, including the members of our communities and society. It is vital to have an awareness of contemporary thought on art practices, as it can be used as a tool for understanding the more complex meaning of art practices; which at the first sight may be perceived as controversial, egocentric and useless for the general

To describe the feeling you get when looking at art, is difficult, and many theorists struggle with how something so purely emotional, so “unreal” is ever present in the world of art. How can something so fluid be grasped? In this essay we will explore the word aura, and how it relates to art. I will argue that the connections we get when looking at art is unreachable and cannot be related to either space or concept.

For over two thousand years, various philosophers have questioned the influence of art in our society. They have used abstract reasoning, human emotions, and logic to go beyond this world in the search for answers about arts' existence. For philosophers, art was not viewed for its own beauty, but rather for the question of how art and artists can help make our society more stable for the next generation. Plato, a Greek philosopher who lived during 420-348 B.C. in Athens, and Aristotle, Plato’s student who argued against his beliefs, have no exceptions to the steps they had to take in order to understand the purpose of art and artists. Though these two philosophers made marvelous discoveries about the existence of art, artists, and

The role and knowledge of the artist has been part of the philosophical discourse on art for a very long time. There have been several philosophers who have contributed to the discussion. Plato, in his piece “Ion,” provides an explanation of knowledge (technique) and inspiration, and how they affect an artist. Plato does this through the dialogue of Socrates and the rhapsode Ion, whom is an expert in the poems of Homer. Although written long ago, when art wasn’t as developed/diverse as it has come to be, the basic concept of knowledge versus inspiration is one that paved the road for future philosophers to further the discussion of the knowledge and role of the artist.

The realm of arts in itself can be perceived as a paradoxical and subjective one, causing struggle for people to come to a universal agreement on what art symbolizes and where its purpose lay. Despite this, we may draw a vague generalisation from the understanding of the majority population that art is a man-made/interpreted existent form, with purpose of communication - such as through words or paintings, to evoke some kind of mental response from an audience, meanwhile some kind of intrinsic quality should be achieved through technique and ideas etc (Lagemaat pg.330 – 333). Yet in the eyes of an artist, Picasso states that the purpose of art is “a lie that brings closer the truth”. To evaluate this claim, further exploration of what a

Art can be both a truth and a lie depending on the ways of knowing and the way it is viewed and interpreted by the audience. ‘Art’ is a diverse range of human activities. This essay focuses primarily on visual arts, which include the creation of images or objects in fields with painting, sculpture, photography, and other visual media. It also explores literature, written works that are considered to have creative or artistic value. Pablo Picasso’s belief that, “ Art is a lie that brings us nearer to the truth” addresses how artists create meaning for the audience through their

An artist expresses his emotions and imagination in his artwork, but there is a major challenge that he faces with delivering his intensions in a clear manner. Some may say abstract art is meaningless, and as a matter of fact, it is not art, for no emotional bonding is being created. Similarly, some may argue that nonobjective artwork is not art for it does not hold a direct connotation. This is where the humans’ capacity of understanding each other plays a major role. We tend to judge others by using our own experiences as the base. We may find one artist’s work beautiful and the other’s ugly due to our altering perspective of beauty. This is why art is defined as an emotional connection between the artist and his audience, because different people have altering views about identifying emotions. Therefore, if the artist is able to convey some feelings in his artifacts, it should be considered art.

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus defines beauty and the artist's comprehension of his/her own art. Stephen uses his esthetic theory with theories borrowed from St. Thomas Aquinas and Plato. The discourse can be broken down into three main sections: 1) A definitions of beauty and art. 2) The apprehension and qualifications of beauty. 3) The artist's view of his/her own work. I will explain how the first two sections of his esthetic theory relate to Stephen. Furthermore, I will argue that in the last section, Joyce is speaking of Stephen Dedalus and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as his art.

“ The artist is creator of beautiful things”(1). This aphorism coveys that beauty can be found within art and by looking at art one is looking at beautiful perfection. “The moral life of man forms part of the subject matter of the artist but the mortality of the art consist of perfect use of an imperfect medium”(1). What the author is trying to explain through this aphorism is that artist use the imperfect things they find in the imperfect world as subjects in their art. However the make these imperfect things become perfect and beautiful through their art work. These aphorism both suggest the aesthetic attitude because they support the idea that “ the highest pleasure is to be found in art”.

Mimesis: The basic theoretical principle in the creation of art (Encyclopedia Brittanica). Mimesis was a term and principle used by both Plato and Aristotle. According to Plato, art is an “imitation of and imitation” when compared to the forms. What he means by this is that an art creation is an imitation of something physical, which in itself is an imitation of a form. Aristotle believes artist creations are an “imitation of an action”. This is interpreted as art is the imitation of the action of life. Together they both agree that artistic creations are imitations of the truth or imitations of the forms. Rather than seeing artistic creations as imitations, I argue that art is an individuals perception of the forms, as well as it is the closest an individual can come to comprehending the forms. The supporting reasons for this argument include proving that the sensible are in fact artworks in their own way, that everyones perception of the forms are different, and that art is the closest way of portraying our versions of the forms.

In the study stirring images: fear, not happiness or arousal, makes art more sublime, the researcher hoped to find exactly which emotions underlie a participant 's positive experience of viewing art. Participants were conditioned into specific emotional states, then viewed pieces of art, and their responses and emotions were noted. The researcher 's conditions included fear and happiness, and when participants were in a fearful state, they had much higher positive judgments about the piece of visual art. The researchers found that the most significant factor and emotion were fear, and that lead to more sublime feelings. I study was the first of its kind, in that it found that one 's perception of art can be manipulated by various emotional states of arousal. This study had some groundbreaking results such as that one 's emotional state may be greatly tied to their perception of art. These results show that fear is tied to a positive reception and judgment of art (Eskine, Kacinik, and Prinz, 2012).

Over time, our concept of beauty seems to fluctuate, similarly our concept of what a good piece of artwork is does so too. What is it about perceiving a piece of art that makes it so fascinating to the onlooker? What is it about art that makes one enjoy some pieces but disfavour others? Does art need to be beautiful in order for one to classify it as art? Whether something aesthetically satisfying should always be considered as a piece of art is often a big debate that arises between art enthusiasts. Societies opinions on art and its artistic value have varied throughout time as culture and attitudes towards certain themes shift. The 18th Century’s classical sculpture seems to have been a popular and commonly praised explanation in the art of people, such art was known as Neoclassicism which was a result of the Renaissance period. The idealisation of the body in the Renaissance which stretched from the 14th to the 17th Century was very common and greatly influential in the development of Neoclassicism. Artists idealised there work for example the body by making it have all the desired qualities no matter how unobtainable in reality. Traits specifically for woman, such as pale smooth skin, perfect proportions, a curved body and a sense of seduction remained the standard until 1850 where artists such as Courbet, Francis Bacon and Yi Chen changed the narrow definition and acceptance for what one considers, through the Realist movement.