tastes like chicken.

Hume's article, though incredibly difficult for me to pay attention to, raised some interesting questions concerning taste. Anyone can criticize art, but it takes someone who knows about the background of the piece or the context in which it was produced or received to really speak intelligently about its merits or flaws. Hume attributes good taste to a critic who has "strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice." I think the word taste implies an innate sense or ability to judge something well (though well can be a relative term). I don't think you can learn taste, though you may be able to learn technique or composition or any other criteria for analyzing art. Hume seems to somewhat agree with me here. To him, a critic must practice and have a breadth of experience with artwork, as well as understanding the context of the piece and eliminating prejudice, but all of this hinges on the critic having a good sense and a delicate sentiment, that is, an ability to pick up subtleties and incorporate them into the whole. I think that Hume provides a well-defined criteria for a good critic, but does not really establish a standard of taste. In fact he comments on the variety of subjects and the predispositions of people to appreciate some more than others. "Taste" as I define it incorporates these predispositions, as you would say that someone has a certain taste in art or music, but he seems to define it as an ability to look past them to appreciate art on another level, something that I would call knowledge or understanding.

As for the monkey and the clown guy, my personal tastes make me think that the monkey is the better of the two, though I would not hang either in my house. I like the monkey more because it looks more realistic, which is my personal preference in art, and the other guy is a little creepy. Also, monkeys are funny and I'm not a huge fan of clowns. I would imagine that both pieces are making some sort of statement, but I don't base my choice on this. To me, taste is a sense of what you find beautiful, which I don't associate with an underlying message. I view a work of art first on whether or not I find it beautiful, and second on what it says to me.

Erik


Alcoholism is a disease, but it’s like the only disease that you can get yelled at for having. “DAMMIT, OTTO, YOU’RE AN ALCOHOLIC.” “DAMMIT, OTTO, YOU HAVE LUPUS.” One of those two doesn’t sound right.
-Mitch Hedberg

Paradigms and Purposes

Freeland's section on Versailles and other gardens was particularly interesting to me because it is a very good example of how humans try to control nature. While some find beauty in the randomness with which nature organizes itself, others use nature as a material for constructing a different kind of art. The neat and orderly way that plants, water, and statues are organized and maintained described in the chapter displays the beauty of nature, while hinting at the thought that humans are superior and are able to control it. This is a sharp contrast with other types of gardens which are meant to show nature as it normally occurs, or at least not set in neat rows and columns. From what I gathered, Louis XIV had the garden designed and constructed to show his authority in this manner, and though I have never seen it I would imagine it is pretty effective at doing this.

Kant described the garden as inspiring free play of imagination, yet he said that the less-orderly English gardens allowed the imagination to roam to far in a way that was "grotesque". I wouldn't go so far as to call English gardens grotesque, but I do recognize how humans see nature in Kant's words. People tend to paint landscapes in an orderly fashion, with a background in the distance and plants that exhibit some sort of organization, whether they are separated by a path or some water or grouped together in patches or rows. I think this speaks to the desire of humans to understand the way nature works, and randomness is not usually accepted by most people. However, I believe that the imagination is more stimulated by natural beauty, while organization tends to make us try to understand the intentions of the artist.

By the way, did anyone else notice that Freeland spelled parsifal wrong twice?

Erik


Have you ever read a book that changed your life? ...Neither have I.
~ Jim Gaffigan

Is art preference in our DNA? (response to Conniff)

The primary argument that I drew from Conniff's article is that humans find certain traits (in art or environment or anything else) desirable based on our evolution and the survival instincts we've acquired. I think his idea that people try to make their habitats look like savannas is actually a good point, though the class took it very literally. No matter where you go, people like properties with large lawns and water and a view, and I think this is very hard to ignore. After all, there is no real point to putting a pond on your property, but people do it. However, I don't think he really moved past this point. The fact that I would prefer to live on a lake with a view and no lions doesn't really have any bearing on the art that I like. If I had to choose whether I liked a very realistic painting of a desert or a dense forest versus the ideal landscape that he describes done with fingerpaints, I would choose the uninhabitable one just because I personally prefer realistic paintings.

The section on fear does not seem to me to connect at all to his argument. Our evolution may lead us to avoid things that want to eat us, but the correlation to why we draw them is beyond me. If i were to walk through an art gallery and see a lifesize painting of a snake lunging at me I would most likely be momentarily startled thanks to my snake-fearing instincts, but I would still find it aesthetically pleasing. Being in the open ocean would scare the hell out of me but i still like to look at pictures of the ocean or storms because it is beautiful.

Basically, I think that humans do in fact choose or modify their habitats based at on instincts, but I don't think that a conclusion about art can be drawn from this. And I don't watch shark week so that I can learn to avoid sharks, I already do that. I watch it because I like violence and I want to see something get torn to shreds.

Erik


-"My friend said to me, "This weather's trippy." I said, "No, man, it's not the weather that's trippy, perhaps it is the way that we perceive it that is indeed trippy." Then I thought, "Man, I should've just said, 'Yeah.'"" -Mitch Hedberg

This blog is officially up and running.

blog is a funny word.

ps: this is what part of the alphabet would look like if q and r were eliminated.