A Response to Denise's Question

In her blog Denise asked the question:
Is art just an attempt to capture the experience of being alive?

I absolutely adore this question and I think it captures the essence of most of art. Put simply, yes, art is a simple and desperate attempt to capture some of the emotion and being of being alive. Is this not the purpose of many things in our lives. Love stories, love poems, romantic movies all want to capture the feeling and essence of being in love. Even for those who have never felt that feeling of loving and being loved in return, these movies still touch us and make us feel something. Good art, such as a good book or a good movie or a magnificent painting make us feel something. That "something" is not the raw or pure emotion but somewhat of a knockoff of that emotion, a generic if you will. Without the true experience and true emotion, we will never really feel love or anger or passion, but art gives us the next best thing. Art gives us those emotions, captured in a painting or in a book or a film or in a song and it displays it to us in an easily digested fashion. It is this attempt to capture being alive and the feelings of being alive that we enjoy so much . However, as I said before, these are not the true emotions and these are not the true experience and that is why art sometimes leaves us with an empty or wanting more feeling. We want these almost tangible and almost real emotions that are given to us through art but we cannot but see or read or watch them play out. Do you think this is why art a lot of the time inspires us, we want these emotions and feelings?

A Response to Katie's Question

In her blog Katie asked:
1. Are artist's more comfortable with the concept of "nothingness"?


In her actual blog post she spoke of the different ways and us humans compartmentalize and break things down into groups and analyze things to death so the world does not seem so big or impossible to understand. Putting everything into groups and breaking down things into base parts make us feel safe. Things like the universe, as Katie suggested, scare us. They scares us because they are "infinite" or immeasurable. They are not things that can be simply broken down or explained and as humans this is not okay with us. By saying it is infinite we are at least giving it a word to be assigned to. Since we are not able to break it down we simply cast it off or brush it off as being infinite. We would love to find the end of the universe and pin point the longitude and latitude of the end. This is why we are constantly exploring space, sending out satellites into orbit and sending astronauts into space. Also, Katie mentioned religion and "God" as something to also satisfy our hunger for answers and truth. We create things such as religion or use it as a tool to feel better about our lives, our situation, and the end of our lives. We use this to answer the unanswerable question. So to answer her question on whether artists feel better about nothingness, no I do not believe they do. When they say that their painting means nothing, I think it is a weak answer to an unanswerable question just as we have done with the universe and death and our lives. But why do we need these weak answers, why cannot we simply say there is no answer?

Rusenova

This week, we discussed the multifaceted face of imagination. Also, the many implicated words that come along with imagination. Among these being thought, knowledge, creativity, understanding, and intuition. We discussed where these words begun and and where they ended. Many believed the start or source from which all these terms sprung was thought. Thought being the basis of everything because what you need to think and to create thought is a brain. You do not need much else. It is extremely interesting to think about where we begin our creative thought. Where it is we begin to be able to be philosophical and ruminate on subjects such as art and life and the human position. I believe, however, that all these words and ideas such as imagination and knowledge and creativity are all human constructs. This is not to say I do not think we have these abilities or the capacity to be creative or knowledgeable, it is to say that we are the only ones who feel we should place a word and definition on them so to make us feel we are the only animals who possess them. But who is to say that no other animal has these qualities in the same degree as we do but has not the means or the words to express them. Even crows have the creativity to add rocks to a container of water to raise the water level so they are able to drink. This is more than most humans (haha). In my opinion, the most humans have over other animals is spoken language, record, and egos and this serves us in one way, dominating the other species and the world. In our eyes, this is our world and everything in it is here for our taking when this is not the case. All these human constructs have caused us to lose sight of what we really are, animals, living in this fragile world. When will we realize this, when we are on the edge of destruction?

A Response to Griffin's Question

In his blog Griffin asked the question, Can a human be an art object?

This is a very interesting question that has numerous implications. This question depends upon one thing, how the public or audience views it. In my opinion, anything is an art object if the public or the art audience views it as such. Art is not truly art unless it is appreciated as art. This might seem superficial or solely based upon the approval of others but it is true. As Goodman described in his chapter, we would not think of Rembrandt's works of art as works of art unless they were displayed in an art gallery or in a museum as art. We would not look at it twice if it was, as Goodman suggests, hanging as window or used as a blanket. This, I believe, would be true for humans too. Since, for the most part, we are not displayed or thought of as great works of art, we are not going to be viewed as such. But things are changing this view. There was an exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science in which people who donated their bodies to science were put on display. They were posed in positions of athletes, housewives, and dancers. The different poses displayed the different layers of skin, the many organs, and the complex muscles. This was not only a science exhibit but also an art exhibit in many people's eyes. Humans were not only the audience and the artist but the art in this case. Also, could we not say that performance art has humans being the art piece as well? Humans are up on stage performing and displaying themselves as the art whether that means dancing or acting or singing. Do you believe humans are the art form in these cases or do you believe the dance or the play or the song itself is the art form?

Aristotle

In his essay on art, Aristotle states many of the same principles and thoughts of his teacher Plato. But he seems to have a much more appreciation for art than Plato did. Plato believed that art did not have a place in society and the emotional aspect of it was detrimental to society and there should be much more reason and practical thinking in the world. In Aristotle's essay, he has a much more of a positive look on the world of art and its place in our lives. He believes its cathartic qualities is one of its main positive points. I absolutely believe this is true. As I said in a previous blog, I very much prefer a good good or a poem to a painting. Many would disagree but that is just my personal opinion. One of my favorite books is Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. It is a very emotionally intense book. The main character goes through every emotion possible within the human spectrum and still has this underlying sadness. We go through a year of high school with him and experience everything first hand. You feel for him, you want him to succeed and get upset when he fails. This feeling of fear and pity that Aristotle talked about is exactly what you go through. This art form has fulfilled Aristotle's musings. You feel these emotions without actually experiencing them. The things that happen in this book are awful and devastating and great and uplifting but if they were in our lives personally we would not see them in the same light. We would be offended and truly destroyed or too overwhelmed with happiness to truly see it in an engaged but outsider perspective. We live vicariously live through this person and we feel their pain but once we are done we feel as if we experienced an art form and enjoyed the experience. And this is cathartic, the "purging of emotions" that are not truly our own.

Is every art form cathartic, or is some art just offensive?

A Response to Denise Question

In her blog, Denise posed the question :
If ideas can be art, then can descriptions of ideas, such as a prose paragraph describing a painting, real or imagined, be art?

I think the answer to this is simply is yes. If not, the descriptive way of poems and  the indulgent ways of philosophical musings would not be considered, in some way, art. We believe the way a good poem ebs and flows and the way the words work together and make us feel the flow and rhythm and meaning of the poem in our hearts, as corny as it sounds, is art. In a way I think they are the same thing in different forms. The descriptive ways of a poem and the philosophical musings are just beautiful paining in word form. Like the poem To Autumn by John Keats is a beautiful and one of the best descriptions of the sights and feelings of autumn or fall, you can feel the slow progression of the death and ending of life in fall, as the summer and the flowers and life slowly winds down. But could this not be a painting like "Autumn's Impression" could give you those same feelings by simply looking at it. Personally, I enjoy a good poem or a well written book to express emotion and feel something. These descriptive paragraphs that could describe a real or imagined painting could mean anything. They could describe the feelings or even the flow or the look of the brush strokes and still it makes us feel or see something that is not physically visible. This is an art from. Being skilled in this way of words just like many lyricists and poets and authors are is an art form. Making someone feeling something or alert a sense that is not present in the art piece is art in itself. What about a description of a book or a poem, would this be considered art? Where does this descriptive way stop?