[hodwic]

> Just making pictures for the only purpose of being "beautiful" is fine, just not very artful...

Beauty is the goal of art.

If his works don't resonate as well as a Nikolay Dubovskoy or a Cy Twombly, or any other human artist, it's in beauty that he fails.

I find that generally this confusion around "beauty" comes from using a popular but non-standard definition of beauty.

Beauty has meant, since the ancient Greeks and up through the romantics to today, "a higher emotional response", whether joyful, sorrowful or disgust.

Beauty is often confused for perfection among laymen. This is not a popular definition of beauty with aesthetic theoreticians, and only reached popularity under the regimes of the early 20th century fascists.

Beauty is a revelatory emotion, any revelatory emotion.

In aesthetics, the opposite of beauty isn't ugliness, but literalism and cold intellectualization.

That which isn't beauty in art is mere journalism, politics, or advertising -- these are lesser concerns than beauty.

Confusing that which isn't beauty in art for the core of art is like thinking that fashion and hairstyles is the core of music, when quite the opposite is true. Fashion diminishes music, not strengthens it.

Similarly -- that which is not about beauty in art diminishes it, not strengthens it.

[superhuzza]

I feel like you're imposing very strict definitions on what is inherently a very ambiguous or 'loose' field.

>Beauty is the goal of art.

I don't think so. Lots of paintings are not beautiful, but are very meaningful and artistic. For example, I find many of Frida Kahlo's works to be extremely artistic but not beautiful.

>Lyrics are what diminishes music

So you think that a song like 'Hurt' (NIN or Cash) is diminished by the very well written lyrics? Or that lyrics with certain rhyming structures subtract from the musicality of a song?

[hodwic]

> Lots of paintings are not beautiful, but are very meaningful and artistic.

Like the GP, you're using a definition of beauty which is not at all standard in the field of aesthetics.

If the work is visually meaningful and artistic, while producing a feeling that is in some way sublime, transcendental, revelatory, etc., then that's beauty you're seeing.

> you think that a song like 'Hurt' (NIN or Cash) is diminished by the very well written lyrics

Lyrics will make bad music better, by distracting from the music. Strip away the lyrics, and the underlying music in Hurt is pathetic when stood up against just about any Classical, Jazz, Progressive, et all, piece.

Lyrics != music. Lyrics are a thing added to music.

> I feel like you're imposing very strict definitions on what is inherently a very ambiguous or 'loose' field.

This is a very common sentiment among people who have not read anything from the last 3,000 years of the philosophy of aesthetics. :-P

[superhuzza]

No, of course I'm not using the definition of beauty from a specific branch of philosophy. In common language, that's simply not what's understood by the word beauty.

[hodwic]

"Aesthetics" isn't a branch of philosophy, unless you consider Formal Logic, Physics and Psychology branches of philosophy as well, it's separate a field of study.

Aesthetics is the sum total of all branches that relate to the thing we're all discussing here.

To flippantly suggest that your misguided lay definition of beauty is preferable in aesthetics than the one hashed out for the last 3000 years by those in the field, is silly.

That's like when laymen remind one that: "Evolution is just a theory", and ask why "monkeys didn't evolve as much as people did".

Any one with a science education will explain that they don't know what the technical terms theory and evolve mean.

And then they'll respond as you did: "I'm using the terms theory and evolve in the normal lay sense, like Conspiracy Theory and Pokemon Evolution. Evolution is just like your philosophy, man."

Don't be that guy.

If you're uninterested in a central field of the humanities, with a rich history going back to Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus in the west, and further in the east, you don't have to go about arguing it on the internet like it's something you're in any way invested in, while spreading blanket falsehoods about the field.

If you think your having looked at Art makes you technically savvy enough to argue aesthetics, ask yourself if Facebook users are thus made qualified to argue software.

[superhuzza]

What are you even talking about? Aesthetics is literally considered a branch of western philosophy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Branches_of_philosoph...

I'm not suggesting my definition of beauty is better, but it's definitely more appropriate given the context. Language is meant to communicate, which is why it's context sensitive. If someone tells me they have a theory about why the sink is blocked, I don't expect it to be a scientific theory - given the context.

And since I make a living from art and design, yeah I feel that I am qualified to have a few opinions on art. But maybe I should just leave that to the philosophers eh?

[hodwic]

Aesthetics is a philosophy in the sense that all serious studies are. (Hence PhD, Doc·tor of Phi·los·o·phy, being the catch all for masters of most intellectual pursuits.)

That self-same wikipedia page you listed also denotes Logic and Cosmology as branches of Philosophy, and the Wikipedia page for Philosophy also lists Physics, Mathematics, Economics, Linguistics. Calling aesthetics a "branch" of philosophy in the pejorative sense that you have here is absurd, given that just about any serious humanity is technically an area of Philosophy.

Yes, I agree that language is contextual. And when you discovered that you were using a very informal definition of beauty on a board full of extremely well educated pedants, while having yourself only a middling appreciation for the study of aesthetics, you'd think your language would modify to reflect that realization. :D

As to your field -- working in a field related to Aesthetics does not mean you have education in Aesthetics.

I make a living in Art and design as well, but that isn't the foundation for my arguments in Aesthetics. Quite the contrary. People working in Art are usually some of the least educated in aesthetics, since our art education has been destroyed by baby boomer hippies.

Don't confuse your craft of Art, with the science of aesthetics.

That would be as absurd as an engineer arguing that his having built a building which stands up to gravity means he has a strong education in the study of gravity. The one hardly relates to the other.

The ability to create works which stand up to the gravity of Aesthetics does not mean that one has a strong education in Aesthetics itself.

Now, I'm not going to say that every engineer who hasn't studied theoretical physics is in a poor position to be an engineer, but it certainly tells you something about their seriousness if they haven't read any books in the field.

Further, if an engineer went to some length to pejoratively tell me that Physics is just a branch of western philosophy when debating the theoretical foundation of the force of gravity, I'd similarly call them out as seemingly not serious.

[tern]

I'm curious how your theory of art deals with minimalism and conceptual art. I suspect you'd have to admit that mid-century we collectively expanded the definition of beauty to include modern ideas – structure, process – and expressions of irony.

[hodwic]

As for irony, ask any art historian with experience in middle ages or late antiquity art. She'll tell you that it has always been a popular device in the arts.

The problem with "irony", where this common myth about its novelty comes from, is that Irony is invisible to generations separated by time and place.

To see irony in a work of antiquity requires a significant amount of education in the circumstances of that work. Irony never lies of the surface of a work. If enough time passes, our appreciation of that irony will often be lost.

How much irony is hidden there in the vase paintings of ancient Greece which we will never recognize, having not the context to see it? Irony, a Greek term, coined by Aristotle, passed on by the Romans, and more recently popularized in the 1500's by the French -- yet could we recognize Irony in any of their works without help?

If the average art critic finds no instances of irony in the art of the past they could be excused for that, their job isn't art history. Those are separate professions.

Where art critics do deserve blame however is when they've been shown countless examples of irony in the works of antiquity, and they act as if those instances are all unique anomalies. If they continue to bandy about the story of irony's novelty to defend the valuations of the works of their contemporaries, that's not fair play.

That's Art Criticism made Marketing, and it's an ugly but extremely common thing.

[tern]

Many thanks for the explanation – you've illuminated a path to a deeper understanding of art history and aesthetics, which I hope one day to possess!

[hodwic]

Before I was just discussing the Aesthetician’s Orthodox.

But here, I’ll answer for myself:

As far as minimalist art, there has been something called “design” which has been considered beautiful since long before modern artists began their war against representationalism.

Beautiful abstract design was the standard throughout all of the areas conquered by Islam, with the arabesques, as well as extremely popular across both Italic Europe and Northern Europe (with the mixture of Celtic Art and Roman giving rise to 10-Century Romanesque).

Abstraction has been highly prized in Europe for thousands of years, just search google images for "Romanesque capital". The Romanesque Capitals are just as abstract and surreal as anything created in the 20th Century, and this lineage of minimalism had at no point died.

Further, the cubists and so on, for their part, were mostly just copying African tribal art. The central thesis that minimalism was New was not historically accurate.

Conceptual art, for its part, used to just be called “Action”, and some actions were considered meaningful and others not so meaningful. Particularly meaningful Actions have always been considered beautiful, profound, transcendental, etc. The figure Jesus is immortalized in the story that he, who said himself God, washed the feet of a prostitute with his hair. You don’t get more conceptual art than that.

The war in the early 20th century was NOT whether design and action had meaning or value or beauty, that has been well established since the beginning of human civilization. In fact, most of civilization would have said that Action has always been more intrinsically valued than Art since it effects something tangible, and certainly Design was through most of civilization more prized.

The war in the early 20th century was over whether CALLING your designs or actions by the designation Big-A Art transmuted them into another stuff and imbued them with intrinsic value that they didn’t already have. I’m not at all convinced that the modernists have won that argument. That line of thinking has always been profoundly refused by the general public, and as time goes on, their central thesis appears to be in decline in popularity with critics, art historians, and theorists.

The irony is that the 20th century modernist’s claims at novelty and intrinsic value all required that one totally ignore the history and value of folk art and design, artful action, and so on, throughout human history and across human cultures. If one takes a more open-minded view of art and art history, the modernist’s claims at originality are laughable at best.

[d--b]

I agree with you, but I was referring to the "beauty" they talk about in the article (which is why I put it in quotes), which is something along the lines of "that that pleases the eye".

[JoeAltmaier]

Not just beauty. Also expression, and emotional appeal. Some very ugly paintings and sculptures speak to whole generations about injustice etc.

Maybe generative art fails there too, I don't know.

[hodwic]

Ugliness is not the opposite of beauty. Ugliness is a form of beauty, or at least its necessary foil. This has been understood for thousands of years.

See Laocoön and His Sons, one of the most beautiful works of art in the human tradition, because of the tragic ugliness therein.

See Hotel Rwanda, one of the most beautiful films ever made, because of the tragic ugliness therein.

Injustice in art often builds the beauty. If there was only injustice, with nothing transcendent about it, it would not stand up as a work of art. It would be brutality porn.

Take that most famous picture of slavery, the scarred photo of a slave's back. The picture's power derives not just from the scars, a record of his mistreatment, but also from his uprightness and strength. There would be nothing transcendent or beautiful in it were it a photo of a man reduced to nothing. It would not be art.

Similarly, the photo of the Chinese man in front of tanks in Tienanmen square is not just about the brutality of communism, but also the strength of the individual. If the photo was merely of a man crushed under a tank, it would scarcely be art. At best it would be journalism, but more likely it would be mere violence porn.