Aristotle and Art

In class we discussed how Aristotle and Dewey's theories were very similar, my professor even suggested that Dewey might have stolen some ideas from Aristotle. However, it what was not mentioned was the link between Aristotle and Freud. Freud claimed that art stems from child's play. Perhaps he was picking up an idea from Aristotle who claims that art comes from mimesis  ( imitating). When children are young, the way they learn about the world is through imitating people and things in their surroundings. A great example of this is when a child plays parent to a baby doll. They mimic an adults behavior to better learn and understand the relationship between  parent and child. Perhaps these two men are on to something, perhaps the world should start trying to define art from a cognitive functioning point of view.

Response to Kimberlee Hume's Do you ever think that people over think things way to much and assume a piece of art work to be much more intentional than it actually is?




Well Ms. Hume I would have to say yes to your question. I find myself asking this all the time with all art forms. My personal nemesis is poetry. I cannot stand when teachers hand me a piece of literature and say tell me the meaning be hind this. Why did they pick this word, what does this symbolize? I want to ask what if the author didn't have any specific meaning behind it. what if the answer to your questions is the artist simply liked the word.  In fact, just today my friend was showing me her art portfolio and we came across a piece that was just boxes on paper with paint scattered across them. I asked her, what does it represent, what does it mean? She looked at me and said there is no meaning behind it, there just is. 
i think people feel compelled to put meaning behind things that don't necessarily have a deeper meaning to make themselves feel comfortable. It is perhaps almost for the same reason us humans feel the need to compartmentalize. the fear of something being nothing is to great for u. Some say the fear of not knowing our purpose on earth led us to "invent" religion and Gods. Another example is the universe. Some people believe it just ends and we have not found a way to measure the great distance to that end so just say it is infinite. 


1. Are artist's more comfortable with the concept of "nothingness"?
2. Is it possible for a dance to represent  nothing or not be intetional?

Preforming Piper

It is very clear from her writings that Piper enjoys  performance art. In fact she claims that performance it is exceptionally unique.  She makes some excellent points,  for example, performance art has a "personal" aspect. The audience has the ability to connect with the performers and the performers with the audience. They can feed off of each others actions.  My classmates however, brought up an interesting question about  what would Piper say about movies? Movies have a personal aspect. After much discussion, our class decided  that movies are not the same thing that has the live performances. That the actors in movies are just "shells" the audience can't directly impact the performance.

Response to Kyle Dempsey's Blog : Have you ever liked a remake of a song better then an original?

 Many times I often like the original better and reject the new one because it's too different which is why I  found this song to be a great exception to my usual preference. The song that I am referring to is Lollipop by Lil' Wayne. When I first heard his song I did like it but was not really interested in it. Then my sister showed me Framing Hanley's remake of the song and it was so much better!

Just for fun you can compare them:
Lil Wayne Version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VAynIX8WT8

Framing Hanley Version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whjh-f3KJ3w



1. What makes remakes of songs more appealing to the audience?
2. Do artists take it is an insult or a compliment when another author alters their work?

The secret works of Picasso

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_france_picasso_trove

Make-up and Art

Yesterday I went Christmas shopping for my mother, sister, and roommate and I wondered into Sephora. For those of you who do not know what Sephora is, it is a very pricey beauty supply store. While I was roaming through the very crowded aisles I noticed two very interesting things. There were so many different types of make-up  each made by different companies except basically each company  sold the same products. The next thing I noticed was the obscene prices. I knew stepping into the store the prices were high but when I saw a eyeliner for 18 dollars my jaw hit the floor. So what does this have to do with art? This got me thinking about two interesting questions that related to art.

1. How does the quality of the materials used in art effect it as a work of art?
2. Can make-up artist's really be artist's?

Response To Caleb's "Subway's Sandwich Artists" post


After reading Caleb's blog title about Subway, my stomach started to growl. I never stopped to ponder if the people creating fast foods would be artist's. I quickly came to the conclusion that they could not be. The people working there are using materials that have already been hand selected by the company to offer to the customer. Also, not only are they required to use those exact materials, they need to make the sandwich according to the customer who is purchasing the sandwich. They are simply placing the materials on top of each other in the order which the customer tells them what they want on their sandwich. If people consider blindly following orders and using no personal touch or creation art then what is stopping the public from including machine made art?

This is a response to Kaylie Sweet's blog: they'll make a statue of us

Well this is certainly an interesting topic. I think that yes the human body and other organisms body can be considered art. It doesn't matter if you are religious or not. If people believe in God(s), then they believe that each person is created in his image and (s)he intended us to look a specific way. For example, in Judaism it is forbidden to alter your body in any way ( with the exception of one ear piercing  in each ear for girls) because that was the way God made them. If you aren't religious, people can still think the human body is art because of evolution. Over the years our being has developed a certain way in order for  our survival. However, even after all these years of developing, people do not often look exactly alike.

Elementary Art Show

In my elementary school, we had an art teacher who hated white spaces on our canvases. Also, their was never a piece that went into the art show that hadn't been fixed by her. My sister and I, along with my parents used to joke how it was really Mrs. -----'s show. Every time we presented her with our finished product, she would take it and make changes to it. I think it would have been more positive if  she made suggestions and let us leave the white parts on our art pieces

1. If an artist creates a piece of art and then it is changed, what does the work become?
2. Can a person create art with no formal background?

Response To Griffin's Post about Silence

Well Griffin I have to agree with you on the observation that the same few people contribute to the class discussions. I know that personally I have only contributed a few times when I thought I had something relevant to say. I have the belief that people shouldn't talk unless they have something of value to say. It really bothers me when people talk just to hear the sound of their voice because they find silence so uncomfortable.  What is wrong with sitting in contemplative silence for a while until someone with a valid point can contribute? Perhaps it is due partly because the topics we are discussing people don't fully understand when their reading on their own. It might be more beneficial if the class was to critically read the chapters together after reading it individually then attempting a Q&A.

Art is... Everything

Today everything seems to be considered art. Acting, film-making, pottery,drawing, dancing, flower arranging, cake decorating, etc. As I said in a previous blog, I looked up the definition of art in the dictionary. Under this definition it mentioned something to the idea that  art can be used  to describe a skill in which something can be done. 

1. Perhaps in this day and age this definition of art might be more pertinent?

2. What other topic  do  philosophers struggle to define?

Response to Griffen's Comedy post

My classmate Griffen raised an interesting point. Can a person have an incorrect sense of humor? First off, I have to state that I disagree with Hume in the first place. I think that there is no "one right opinion" when discussing art. I think that art is personal to each individual, everyone is going to take something different from looking at the same work of art. The same  thought could be compared to comedy. Each person varies in their taste for comedy. For example, I dislike slapstick comedy while others think that it's the funniest form. There can't be a judge as to which type of comedy is better and no one can judge which sense of humor is the right one.

This is a response to Griffin's "can art be sinful or evil?"

I think art most certainly can have the  connotation of being sinful placed on it but the actual art itself can't be sinful or evil. To me evil is an act that is committed from one person with the intent to do harm on another. A painting can't physically harm another person, nor a statue. Same goes with being sinful. A painting itself can't be considered sinful, but perhaps the content of the painting is considered by some religions to be sinful. I think that these words, sinful or evil is subjective to each person and therefore it is impossible to categorize art in such a way.

The Definition of Art

The sole purpose of our Art and Philosophy class is to define what art is. First off, I think we should notice that in the course title it says the word philosophy. Philosophy is a wonderful, interesting field of study but at the end of the day you mostly just end up with more questions then you started with. Perhaps it was with this ideology that Weitz claimed that art is indefinable. After all the philosophers we have discussed in this class, I agree most with him. I guess partly because I don't know where to start defining art and every time I think our class gets close, we find something wrong with the theory or definition. It's frustrating and frankly I want to throw my hands up in the air and be done with it. However, because Weitz said that art is indefinable I went and looked in Webster's dictionary. In the dictionary art is defined as:  the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.


1. Why don't we just use the dictionary definition to define art?


2. Why does the defining of art matter so much to philosophers?

This is a Response to Sarah LaBaire's Liposuction

Well I guess, if you are including tattoos and piercings as art then liposuction could be considered art as well. Liposuction does involve the body shaping it in a new way, but I think plastic surgery would be a better example of body art. The plastic surgeon is creating a new piece of art and has to make sure that the new body part not only looks good by it's own merit, but enhances a person's look as well.  Same goes for tattoos and piercings, I think tattoos are a better form of body art because your creating a separate entity/ product, just using the rest of the body as a canvas. where as piercings and liposuction are just changing the body's original form

Experience and Art

I think experience is one of the most important  components when creating art. However, what these philosophers that we are studying fail to incorporate in their theories is that their are different types of experience and different definitions of experience. One type of experience that we learned about from Freud was that artists use past experiences to create their artwork. From Tolstoy we learn that art is the experience of making the product but also gaining aesthetic emotion from the piece. Lastly the last use of  experience would be in the form of practice. Meaning that the artist was good at creating something simply because they had worked at producing the same thing over and over.

1. Which form of experience is the most important?
2. Could the equation of art be art = experience?

Clive Bell

I am really displeased with Thomas E. Wartenberg's  decision to include  Clive Bell's theory of art in The Nature of Art. I feel this because First of all, Clive Bell starts out by insulting his readers. His tone is one of arrogance and superiority, making your reader feel like a simpleton is not a good way to begin your defense of your theory. Besides that,my class and I discovered that Bell's theory is very flawed. His theory is flawed for two very big reasons. The first reason is that he can not explain what he means when he says  a piece of artwork has to evoke "aesthetic emotion". Bell claims that it is not of this world and only some people can feel that way. The second major flaw of this theory is that when taken to the literal sense, the audience ends up looking at nothing. The significant form of anything, according to Bell is to break it down to it's most abstract form. However, If you continue to do that, you will end up with a blank canvas and that to me doesn't seem to be art.

1. Does beauty play an important role in judging art?
2.What would dance look like if we used Clive Bell's theory?

This is a response to Amanda Olsen's Dreams, Day Dreams, and Nightmares.

I agree with Amanda's conclusion that daydreams are closer to the surface and are more easily changed. This is because the conscious part of your mind is contributing to your thoughts. In these daydreams you have the ability to manipulate them and think about what you want to happen. These don't really help a person to understand themselves on a deeper level. Dreams I believe send us messages from a deeper part of us or our "subconcious". During the day our minds are still consumed with social norms telling us that a thought or desire we have is wrong. However, when your asleep that part of the mind is at rest too so therefore your true feelings can be revealed and in a way you do not be threatened by them. When it comes to nightmares, I think  that they are just products of our imaginations that have gone to far. For example when we dream about supernatural beings, we don't necessarily have a clear image of them so our mind makes up an image that may be scary to us. However, when you have a realistic nightmare I think it is just our mind experimenting with a fear that we may or may not know we have in our waking life.

Curiosity and Creativity

Today in class we had a brief discussion on the connection between curiosity and creativity. It didn't come as a shock that people thought the two are intertwined. It makes sense that curiosity leads to creativity. If a person is interested in finding out about something, odds are they want to experiment different things. Sometimes, that ends up creating artwork. However, creativity can lead to curiosity as well. Say an artist is painting a picture and they don't like how it looks with the texture of  paint, they might experiment with other materials. For instance, oils or pastels.

1. Are artists more curious then the rest of us?
2.  Do artists have something else besides skill that makes them able to create such great works?

Response to Sarah LaBaire's Without Light

First of all I want to thank Sarah for raising an entirely new thought in my head. I never thought about art from the perspective of a blind person and for that I feel really bad. In my opinion, I say sure! There should be art that doesn't necessarily have to be visual. In fact, I think that would be a fantastic new category to add to the art world. Touch is one of the five senses, and your friend Josh's form of art sounds like an interesting phenomenon. Perhaps it will give people a chance to express themselves in other ways. I for instance can't draw very well but I love feeling different textures and to me I get emotions from different textures.

Response to Alex Cole

Alex raises a very interesting topic of discussion, is the intended emotion of the art more  important or is it of the same value that a person feels from viewing it?  I believe that intentionality of emotion is important to  a piece of art on some level because the reason the artist is creating the piece is to express himself/herself. If it is done well, the piece of art should reflect the artists emotion. However, we can't discredit the importance of what emotions the viewer feels. The art in a lot of instances is made for the viewer. Sometimes art can be ambiguous and it is a person's life experience or color preference that determines what emotion is evoked from a work of art.

Color in Art

When we go to school we are taught that certain colors are associated with emotions or feelings.  For example, yellow = happy, red = anger/love, blue = sadness. we grow older and then interpret art by our definition of the color. We don't recognize that the artist may come from a different background and to him/ her red = happy. That's the interesting thing about color, there is not a universal manual describing what each color represents. Also, colors can mean different things to different people because of experiences.

1.Based on Pavlov's experiment with getting the dogs mouthes to salivate at the sound of a bell, couldn't it be possible to associate a color with an emotion?

2. Why do other societies interpret colors in different ways then ours does?

Response to Duncan Baxter's Question

It would not be possible to have an unbiased news program in todays society. I believe this for many reasons. One reason is that every person brings his/ her own personal experiences  where ever they go and it  comes through in their work. For example, if a person was raped before, they would most likely  have some strong feelings if they were involved in a news story about rape. Their own personal experience and feelings would most likely come in to play. Also, a news station would never be completely be truthful because they want to excite the audience to increase their ratings. Broadcasting is a business and the only way they are going to make money is to  entice viewers to tune in. Sadly, ethics are not usually the focus of most companies, their goal is to sell the story not make sure its completely without bias.

The Value of Art in Society and Plato

A few days ago in class we began to discuss the value of art. I think that the value of art in society fluctuates depending on the era. For some civilizations it is impossible to know how they truly valued art because there is no written works telling us. However, I think it is safe to say that art does always have some value in a society. Take the caveman for example, they didn't have a written language but we find remains of their drawings in caves. Perhaps Plato forgot to consider earlier civilizations when he was discussing art with Socrates because he says art is bad for society  because it effects your emotions not your rational side. In fact, art in the caveman's era could possibly be considered as essential for the survival of their society because it was a form of communication.

1. Is art in our society more valued or less valued then other eras?
2. How important is speaking compared to body language as a source of communicating?

Response to Kimberlee Humes's Art Apreciation

 I personally don't know why people would spend millions of dollars on a painting that looks like a kid could paint it either. However, I often find myself asking the question  how could something seeming so simple that a little kid could "imitate it" be worth so much? As well as, what made this piece of art worth the million dollar price tag? It turns out the price of a painting is usually so high because of the cost of materials, time spent working on the painting, and because an art gallery takes a good cut of the money the painting is sold for. Also, I believe that some paintings are priced so high because of that artists reputation.  For example, if there were doodles drawn on a napkin from Monet, the price would automatically be millions of dollars because he has a reputation in the art world. I think these pieces of art can be compared to things people get signed by celebrities. A poster of a flower is still the same as another copy of the exact same poster but once it has a famous person's signature, the value skyrockets. Lastly, I think if the artist is living or not contributes to the price of their artwork as well. The price of a living artists work might be lower because they can still create other works.

Intentionality of Art

 When I read the introduction to The Nature of Art, I thought to myself that intentionality did not make something a work of art. To my pleasant surprise, many of my classmates felt the same way. One person's story was of particular interest to me. She talked about how her mother framed and displayed one of her finger paintings that she didn't even remember creating. Then years later she made her mom a picture of a sunset that was considered and intended by her to be art but her mom didn't frame it or hang it up.  It raised  a new question in my mind about a different kind of intention. Perhaps instead of focusing on if the artist  intended a piece to be art or not, us as viewers should ask:

1. What are we intended to be getting out of viewing a piece of art?
2. Is the intention of the artist  to  evoke a specific reaction to their art more important then their intention to create a piece of art itself?