Following on from the first session of “The Philosophy of Art and Design”, the second week focuses on arguments as well as asking the big question, “What is Art?”.

In order to understand “What is Art?” I first began by looking at some famous pieces of art that are seen as controversial, for instance Duchamp’s urinal was one of the first pieces of art to contradict the common vision of what art is considered to be. This marks the point when art becomes something more than simply what the eye can perceive, but it becomes more about the idea (1917).

Many consider art to be something that provokes emotion, as well as being able to be created by anyone, it must be require effort to produce as well as must be seen by an audience alongside requiring a sense of creativity. Although this view is quite accepted further research has revealed problems with this view, the ever changing and fluidity of art makes it extremely difficult for art itself to have a definition that could be used for the whole of time. Another problem with this view is the fact that many of the factors used here to define art are relative, in particular effort and skill, someone who is extremely talented within the creative industry would consider have a much larger skill set than someone who is a beginner in creating artworks.

A question that is very important to ask is “Who decides what is art?”. Would it be the most successful artist? or simply the view that is most commonly accepted? However how would one discover what the most accepted view is in the first place. I personally feel as though art itself is subjective to the viewer, I very much believe in the “Eye of the beholder” opinion”. If two people look at the same piece, I feel it is okay that one may consider it art and the other may not, I consider that simply one of the many complex things about being a human.

However, others continue to search for a concrete meaning, a popular opinion on the meaning of art is to consider the “Necessary and Sufficient conditions”.

The way Necessary conditions work is as follows,

If something is going to be art, it must possess this quality

The way Sufficient conditions work is as follows,

If it possesses this quality, then it is art.

However what quality should something have in order to make it art? Expression? This cant be used as football fans may shout support for their team as an expression, does that make that art? Beauty? If a landscape contain beauty, is that art? it has not been “crafted by any individual and so previous searches for a meaning of art are totally abandoned. In truth, I think any attempt at finding a meaning of art is flawed within its nature due to the fact that history will continually change art, and therefore the meaning within it. It would be more suitable to find meanings for certain movements within art rather than one solid meaning for all of art itself.

Referring back to Duchamp’s urinal, it proves that art has no physical boundary, as well as proving that art is not only beauty Danto’s expression of the opinion of Art is that Art is something that requires external knowledge about art itself to understand, art is something that is no longer about what it looks like, the work must become something further than simply what our eyes perceive, requiring artistic theory. Art can also be down to an informed interpretation, Danto states that with a knowledge of art, if you can make an argument that something is art, then that itself proves that the piece being argued about is already considered art. This alongside the fact that if a work is puzzling, then it engages metaphor, making the work more interesting by moving the mind to action.

 

Arguments

An argument is a way of supporting ideas, a way to prove one of your ideas. An argument will be the factor that determines whether an opinion is strong or weak.

(Look at moodle slides after break of week two session).

 

 

 

Now beginning my second term of constellation I have now started a new topic, The Philosophy of Art and Design, for the first week we looked at the famous philosopher Berkeley for the first time, exploring his ideas and thoughts on the world as well as analysing his most famous text “To be is to be perceived”. When exploring this text we also looked into the ways it has been challenged, i found it difficult to argue with Berkeley’s thoughts, I feel this is due to the nature of philosophers themselves. Unlike scientists or Religious persons, they do not attempt to persuade others of another viewpoint, their observations are very much neutral, they may believe certain thing how ever a famous question Berkeley asked was “If a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”. Within this he is simply asking a question, he does not state that he thinks it does/does not, because of this the reader is left thinking, when I attempted to counter Berkeley’s question I used physics as Newton teaches us that energy can never be lost, only transferred into different forms, due to the fact that the tree falling would cause it to lose its potential kinetic energy, that energy would have had to be transferred into sound energy. However it was pointed out that scientific instruments used to measure energy levels could be considered only an extension of our own human perception, and that the event is then perceived once the measurements are done. Alongside thinking of ways to disprove Berkeley  I was also presented with the work of John Locke, who opposed Berkeley and also attempted to disprove him, writing that “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper,void of all characteristics,without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished?”.

Berkeley (1650) marks the beginning of modern thinking within humans, he marks the point in time when we no longer simply drone on with our lives, un questioning of its purpose, he is considered one of the first to question life itself, raising thoughts that objects that do not possess self cognition require the perception of one with such ability to even exist within the world. For example, a bottle is only purple because there is a person there to perceive that very property.

I thoroughly enjoyed this session of constellation, the challenging concepts forced me to think deeply and philosophically about concepts i had not previous thought about. Learning large amounts of new information and generating initial ideas for what I will eventually write my essay about at the end of this term, I look forward to next week and hope it brings similar challenges to learn about and face.