...10/20/07 PL20-2948 Professor Fellenz Assignment #2 Aesthetic Theory What in fact is the nature of art? Is aesthetic experience more abstract and subjective or does it possess elements of tangibility? Is art something that a healthy human population could live without or is it an integral part of our moral fiber? They say necessity is the mother of invention. It is apparent over the course of human history that as our capacity for knowledge expanded, so did our need for different avenues of expression. Most people say art imitates life. Oscar Wilde was wise enough to see that after a while, life begins to imitate art. So which is more important to the other? Art to life or life to art? Logically art would never have existed without the human catalyst. That concept is easy enough to understand. It is a little bit more difficult for us to be able to see how far human beings have come because of art, as well as how various artistic mediums can speak volumes about us as a people and society. Art is extremely important when considering things such as this. In a way it is like the chicken or the egg debate. Do the things we own (or create) end up owning (or creating) us? Or do we, in all of our cognitive glory, have total control? Artists can portray this delicate relationship in a way that would otherwise be blurry. Art is special is this kind of debate because almost all forms...
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...the beholder” is the phrase that is often heard when discussing the topic of attractiveness but is this true? Does beauty really depend on who is looking? Beauty or aesthetics are often looked at in reference to artwork. Aesthetic means to be “concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty; also the philosophical theory or set of principles governing the idea of beauty at a given time and place (dictionary.com).” These words will be used interchangeably throughout this paper. There are many different opinions on what aesthetic qualities allow a painting to be considered beautiful. Some of these qualities are balance, rhythm, emphasis, proportion, sequence and repetition (Clair, 1939). Another article by Chen (????), measured what participants looked at when deciding whether or not a painting is beautiful and the frequent factors were meaning, brushstroke, style, shape, perspective, mood, originality, balance, and unity. An exhibition at the Birchfield Penny Art Center displays many of Charles Birchfield’s famous artwork and with every second Friday being free to students, it’s no wonder visiting the museum is such a great past time. Currently, the museum is showing two exhibits about Charles Birchfield: A Resounding Roar and Audio Graphics. One of my favorite pieces “New Moon,” displays some debatable aesthetic qualities.. This is one of Birchfield’s...
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...Table of Contents: An introduction: What does “product quality” really mean? 2 Understanding consumers’ perspective 2 * a) Intrinsic cues 4 * b) Extrinsic cues 4 * c) Appearance cues 4 * d) Performance cues 4 The role of aesthetics in apparel products 5 * 3.1 The sensory dimension of the aesthetic experience 5 * 3.2 The emotional dimension of the aesthetic experience 5 * 3.3 The cognitive dimension of the aesthetic experience 5 Conclusion 6 References 7 1. An introduction: What does “product quality” really mean? The Oxford Dictionary defines quality as “The standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something; General excellence of standard or level. Many manufacturers use quality as a way to extinguish themselves from their competitors’ products.” It is very important to differentiate between intrinsic- and extrinsic properties of clothes. Intrinsic properties are the fit and feel of the clothing item and the ability to use it for multiple wearing. It also includes the chemical and physical properties of the clothing (Kincade & Gibson; 2010:78). The extrinsic properties are how the product appears to the consumer end their feeling of wealth, luxury and status. Most of the time this includes the brand names, price and store where the items are bought (Kincade & Gibson; 2010:78). 2. Understanding consumers’ perspective: Consumers have different ways of interpreting...
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...Chinese Art and Design - Symmetry in Chinese Art and Design Symmetry has been widely used in various contexts. In traditional Chinese art and design, the concept of symmetry is one of the most important aesthetic principles. Symmetrical beauty is derived from nature, i.e., law of nature in Taoism. The human body and almost all animals are symmetric, which shows a beauty of health and balance. Rather asymmetry leaves people an impression of displeasure. Symmetry is also the manifestation of Chinese philosophy of harmony and zhongyong (the Mean thought) in Confucianism. The aesthetic principle of symmetry in Chinese art is similar to the “Golden Rule” in the West, the aim of which is to achieve balance. This essay aims to discuss the aesthetic principle of symmetry used in Traditional Chinese Art and Design, including ancient Chinese Bronze artwork, ancient Chinese architecture and Chinese paper cutting. I. Symmetry in Ancient Chinese Bronze artwork Bronzes basically can be classified into four types in terms of function: food vessels, wine vessels, water vessels and musical instruments. Various shapes and designs can be found in each type, fully demonstrating the creativity and skills of the ancient people. Despite of this, symmetry was used as a universal basic aesthetic principle. Ancient Chinese bronzes stressed balance and symmetry of form, and communicated solemnity and ceremony. Among the various kinds of bronze vessels, ding is a significant category. Originally ding...
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...For a cosmetologist who specializes in the study of skin care, see Esthetician. Aesthetics (/ɛsˈθɛtɪks/; also spelled æsthetics and esthetics) is a branch ofphilosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty.[1][2] It is more scientifically defined as the study ofsensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentimentand taste.[3] More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature."[4][5] More specific aesthetic theory, often with practical implications, relating to a particular branch of the arts is divided into areas of aesthetics such as art theory, literary theory, film theory and music theory. An example from art theory is aesthetic theory as a set of principles underlying the work of a particular artist or artistic movement: such as the Cubist aesthetic.[6] Contents Edit The word aesthetic is derived from the Greek αἰσθητικός (aisthetikos, meaning "esthetic, sensitive, sentient"), which in turn was derived from αἰσθάνομαι (aisthanomai, meaning "I perceive, feel, sense").[7] The term "aesthetics" was appropriated and coined with new meaning in the German form Æsthetik(modern spelling Ästhetik) by Alexander Baumgarten in 1735. Aesthetics and the philosophy of artEdit Aesthetics is for the artist as Ornithology is for the birds. — Barnett Newman[8][9] For some, aesthetics is considered a synonym for the philosophy of art sinceHegel, while others insist...
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...definitionS of Pragmatic, Pragmatism, and the Pragmatic Theory of Drama in Plato and Aristotle. A University of Lagos, M.A Seminar Work By Larayetan, Raphael Segun, (Mat. No.139013058) COURSE: Theory of Drama LECTURER: Dr. Patrick Oloko Introduction: This paper attempts an exploration of pragmatics, pragmatism and pragmatic theory as perceived by scholars from different intellectual tradition with focus on drama as a genre of literature. From the classic to the contemporary period, dramatic theorists and dramatists have been involved in the polemics on functions of drama, whether it is an instrument of communicating ideas or just a genre of literature that only entertains. Whether drama entertains or bears the ideological or moral burdens which the author through his art intends to pass to the readers, drama unequivocally has a function which, according to Philip Sidney, is to “teach and to delight”. With this in mind, it can be established that every piece of drama sets out to achieve a function though critics and dramatists have disagreed on what the ideal function of drama should be. It is this light that the current paper explores the pragmatic theory of drama in Plato and Aristotle, or, simply put; how Plato and Aristotle perceive the ideal function of drama. Definition of Terms: Pragmatism is a theory that emphasises the dual function of a work of art. It stipulates the heuristic function...
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...diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, but here refers to the visual arts, which cover the creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media. -art in terms of mimesis, expression, communication of emotion, or other values. During the Romantic period, art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science". -"the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others". 2. destinction of an art as aesthetic - Art aesthetics is the philosophy of art, and naturally tries to arrive at statements about representation, coherent form, emotive expression and social purpose that are universally true, independent of context and speaker. Unfortunately, that very generality means that aesthetics can often be used to justify a very doubtful piece of work. Aesthetics is for the artist as Ornithology is for the birds.— Barnett Newman 3. The different Kinds of Art • Fine arts –Beaux arts- and it include painting, drawing,sculpture, and graphic design. • The plastic arts. The plastic arts are the art form that involves moulding or making models. Clay, metal and wax are examples of the plastic arts. • The applied arts. This kind of art implies everything that can be useful, artistic, and beautiful. As when an artist forms a vase using clay in an artistic design. The Applied...
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...April 17th, 2016 Kierkgaard’s “3 Stages of Life (Aesthetic, Ethical and Religious) Soren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) emphasizes the stages of life’s way which includes aesthetic, ethical and religious. It is essentially stated that all persons pass through the three stages to come into themselves. However, the idea of aesthetics, ethical and religious matters does not always coincide with one another. These things all potentially hold different characteristics and are developed differently in each individual. Nonetheless, they will essentially conflict with one another as Kierkegaard describes their stages in a fictitious manner. Kierkegaard makes it rather intense to give his own particular standpoint on the stages of life, and he does not decree answers. On the other hand, he encourages individuals to make their own conclusions. My theory is that the stages on life’s way including aesthetics, ethical and religious stages are the infinite developments on life’s way for all individuals. However, these stages are not emphasized to have had chronological order. They are uniquely criticized differently as they all are developments of life’s way. These three stages were composed for everyone to analyze and evaluate their own situations distinctively. The answer to the three stages of life does imply the individual interpretation on particular stages rather than someone else’s interpretation. In theory, the uniqueness of aesthetics, ethical, and religious stages are that they are developed...
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...There was something in the art world air in the twentieth century that caused writers of now-standard art histories to grudgingly pose the question "What is art?" It may be the most important question for a philosopher to concern himself with. What is art? How is it known? And how, given the answers to these questions, may it be evaluated? We will look at two books on this subject: Beauty by philosopher and critics Roger Scruton and Cynthia Freeland: but is it art? Both writers are consummate prose stylists who display as well as discuss a fine aesthetic sensibility. We will use the Holy Virgin Mary painting by Chris Ofili and the Matana Roberts performance as the template for which we will assess the fine line between aesthetics and ethics according to these philosophers. The Holy Virgin Mary is a painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996. The subject of the work, and its execution, caused considerable controversy– describing Ofili's work as "sick". The piece features a yellow-orange background, the large painting (8x6) depicts a black...
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...The art world is composed of all the people involved in the production, commission, presentation, preservation, promotion, chronicling, criticism, and sale of fine art. Howard S. Becker describes it as "the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that art world is noted for" (Becker, 1982). In her book, Seven Days in the Art World, Sarah Thornton describes it as "a loose network of overlapping subcultures held together by a belief in art. They span the globe but cluster in art capitals like New York, London, Los Angeles, and Berlin."[1] Other cities that can be classified as "art capitals" include Beijing, Hong Kong, Miami, Paris, Rome and Tokyo; due to their large art festivals, followings and being centers of art production. The notion of the singular art world is problematic, since Becker [2] and others have shown, art worlds are multiplicities, they are globally scattered, constantly in flux, and typically operating independently of each other: there really is no center to the art world any more. In her analysis of the "net art world" (referring to network-aided art or net art Amy Alexander states "net.art had a movement, at the very least it had coherence, and although it aimed to subvert the art world, eventually its own sort of art world formed around it. It developed a culture, hype and mystique through lists and texts; it had a centre, insiders, outsiders...
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...A list of sample questions in philosophy Metaphysics: questions concerning the nature of reality, being, or existence Ontology 0 Why is there something rather than nothing? 1 Is it possible that there was a time before now when absolutely NOTHING existed? 2 What is ultimately (or REALLY) real? [Appearance -v- Reality] 3 Is reality fundamentally one or many? [Monism -v- Pluralism] 4 What, if anything, endures through change? 5 Is reality primarily material or spiritual (or mental)? [“Materialism” -v- “Idealism”] 6 Is the “external world” objectively real, or is its existence mind-dependent? If the latter, what mind is it dependent on? My mind? Your mind? The divine mind? 7 Is there a “supernatural” reality, or is nature “all there really is”? [Naturalism -v- Supernaturalism] 8 What is the difference between necessary and contingent being? Is there a necessary being? Is there only one necessary being? Philosophical cosmology 9 What is the cosmos made of? How is it structured? 10 Did the cosmos come into being? If so, how? 11 Will the cosmos cease to be in the future? If so, what does that mean for us? 12 What are the philosophical implications of scientific answers to cosmological questions? Philosophical theology (and the philosophy of religion) 13 Does God exist? [Theism; Atheism; Agnosticism] 14 What is the nature of God? 15 What about the existence of evil (pain, suffering, and disorder)...
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...THE RULES OF THE GAME: NOUVELLE EDITION FRANCAISE/THE KOBAL COLLECTION DEEP FOCUS CANON FODDER As the sun finally sets on the century of cinema, by what criteria do we determine its masterworks? BY PAU L SC H RA D E R Top guns (and dogs): the #1 The Rules of the Game September-October 2006 FILM COMMENT 33 Sunrise PREFACE THE BOOK I DIDN’T WRITE I n march 2003 i was having dinner in london with Faber and Faber’s editor of film books, Walter Donohue, and several others when the conversation turned to the current state of film criticism and lack of knowledge of film history in general. I remarked on a former assistant who, when told to look up Montgomery Clift, returned some minutes later asking, “Where is that?” I replied that I thought it was in the Hollywood Hills, and he returned to his search engine. Yes, we agreed, there are too many films, too much history, for today’s student to master. “Someone should write a film version of Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon,” a writer from The Independent suggested, and “the person who should write it,” he said, looking at me, “is you.” I looked to Walter, who replied, “If you write it, I’ll publish it.” And the die was cast. Faber offered a contract, and I set to work. Following the Bloom model I decided it should be an elitist canon, not populist, raising the bar so high that only a handful of films would pass over. I proceeded to compile a list of essential films, attempting, as best I could, to...
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...support it would have been much harder to produce. A special thanks goes to Steve Westerman for creating the computer programme used, and guidance with statistics. CONTENTS Title Page…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1 Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...2 Contents Page……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..3 Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..4 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..5 1. How are Aesthetic Preferences Formed………………………………………………………………………….……………6 1. Previous Experience…………………………………………………………………………………………….……………..6 2. Physiological Feelings and Threat Perception……..……………………………………………………….………..6 3. Evolution…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…….7 4. Processing…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..7 2. Aesthetic Preferences………………………………….…………………………………………………………………….………8 1. Contour…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………..9 2. Graphic………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………9 3. Complexity…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………10 4....
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...the most controversial and complex themes in Western philosophy. Beauty has been among the ultimate values, with goodness, truth, and justice. “It is a major subject among different philosophers such as the ancient Greek, Hellenistic, and medieval, and was central to 18th and 19th-century thought, as represented in treatments by such thinkers as Hutcheson, Hume, Kant; Hegel, and Santayana.” Different philosophical issues concerned the objectivity and subjectivity of beauty. In other words, philosophers argued whether is beauty a property of some objects (like mass, shape, etc.) or is beauty a judgment of the mind observing the object (an emotion, feeling or evaluation). Subjective theory of beauty existed primary in the Antiquity and the middle Ages, while the modern period retained the objective theory for a long time. In this essay, we will get insights of both subjectivist and objectivist accounts. According to philosophers, “Objective is something that can be known, which exists as part of reality, independent of thought or an observer. While subjective exists in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather...
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...philosophy based in the simplistic beauty of things—the pursuer may, in the end and without notice, emerge uglier than ever before. Dorian, the once wide-eyed innocent, buckles and caves in to depravity while practicing an aesthetic lifestyle, despite the beauty that such a life idea claims. I began to wonder what Oscar Wilde intended to convey with his portrayal of the Aesthetic Movement incarnate and its often harsh consequences, especially given the well-documented involvement of Wilde in promoting aestheticism in his contemporary society. The juxtaposition of Wilde’s support for the Aesthetic Movement with Dorian’s corruption at the hands of it provided a great jumping-off point and a lingering question with which to begin an essay. What exactly is Wilde’s view of aestheticism when one bears in mind the story of Dorian Gray? In writing my essay, I realized Wilde’s outlook is not as straightforward as it may first appear. Throughout the writing process, a difficult task I faced was to encapsulate the aesthetic position when the philosophy often meant different things to different people. In researching the movement, I found that the moral philosophies of various proponents of aestheticism often varied and, thus, it became difficult to nail down the aesthetic tenets and apply them to Dorian Gray. In retrospect, some observations about the philosophy may, consequently, appear too generalized. I was also challenged in the initial formulation of my argument. It was initially difficult...
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