How Do You Judge Art?

[Belinda]

Invictus,variety of positions on the X and Y axes for aesthetic appeal and depth of meaning is very good.This sorts a problem for me: I had been thinking of both form and meaning being subsumed under aesthetic appeal. I think I may now be more able to tell some others what I mean regarding aesthetic experiences.I have now taken on board your idea. Thanks.

Please tell me, given that religious expression and aesthetic expression are the same, could very high aesthetic appeal be what is sometimes called mystical experience?

[willowtreeme]

Belinda:

Good morning.

Here is one definition of what a mystical experience is, with certain criterion.

..."upheaval of the total personality" to Greeley's (1974) "spiritual force that seems to lift you out of yourself" to Scharfstein's (1973) "everyday mysticism." A definition of mystical experience both congruent with the major theoretical literature and clinically applicable is as follows: the mystical experience is a transient, extraordinary experience marked by feelings of unity, harmonious relationship to the divine and everything in existence, as well as euphoria, sense of noesis (access to the hidden spiritual dimension), loss of ego functioning, alterations in time and space perception, and the sense of lacking control over the event....

I am not quite sure just "how" you are relating aesthetic expression with religious expression -- what exactly you mean by that.

As far as art goes, a painting, etc. it's possible that you might view it and perhaps it awakens something within you that gives you that experience described above -- or perhaps holding the image in your mind, at some point later something might "click" and you have a "mystical experience".

I sort of feel, and this is just my opinion, perhaps one of the criterion for a mystical experience is
that there has to have been something going on within a person, some problem being worked on, whether consciously or subconsciously, or some kind of emergence about to take place within a person.
Perhaps what I am speaking more of here is an epiphany.

One might be looking at the beautiful night sky with the stars (I use that a lot because I so love the starlit night sky);

or a beautiful giant oak tree.

In other words, anything that one might find "beautiful" from their perspective. I think it simply takes one "moment" for everything in the universe to be "arranged" within that person and everything simply stands "still", everything is "one" and "whole", whether someone views this as "God" or simply the universe. Total unity.

I gave the definition above, but isn't it so difficult to describe an experience, Belinda.

I think one could actually have a mystical experience "stepping into a pile of mud" for that matter (hee hee) I think so though.

I have no idea of whether this answers your question at all. Dealing with facts is easy; dealing with the mystical is "mystical" .
Peace

[Belinda]

willowtreeme, good evening to you. Thank you for the helpful definition of a mystical experience. Works of art do not affect me,personally, in that way, and even a grand oak tree does not affect me in that mystical way, as described. I suppose my habit of analysing what is going on gets in the way.The best I for me is what nameless has called the finding of similarites betwen perspectives although in a more immediate way than the purely cognitive. Cognitive value too.

I am currently trying to understand how an otherwise articulate person may insist that an artistic experience is not suitable material for analysis, or even of comment, because such an experience just is. I wondered if such an experiencer could be having mystical experiences caused by contemplating some works of art. Also I think that art is related to spiritual experience. As a way to picture the nature of both cases, art and the sacred, I am very taken with the possibilities of invictus's graph.

I mentioned it to someone who suggested that there may be more axes than just the X and Y axes for describing a work of art, although I for one cannot imagine what the other axes might represent.

I know that invictus's idea of the X and Y axes is just a metaphor, and I find it to be particularly fertile metaphor, well worth working on.

[willowtreeme]

Belinda,

And a good morning to you...

You said: "Works of art do not affect me,personally, in that way, and even a grand oak tree does not affect me in that mystical way, as described".

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that works of art and oak trees wouldn't affect you in a mystical way. Correct? So.... There are many ways in which a person can have a mystical experience. I just mentioned those two. It's possible that Einstein had a ME in formulating his equation on relativity -- then again, maybe not. Always to be open. And -- MEs aren't an everyday occurrence.

Can works of art and an oak tree affect you in an aesthetic way/have meaning for you, Belinda? Can you feel something of beauty when you look at them? Again, if not so....

It doesn't have to be the above-mentioned. That's why the saying -- "one man's meat is another man's poison (or woman's).

It could be a philosophical question you've been playing with for months, and suddenly, there you go, Belinda. The whole universe swirls around you and you are one with it -- perfect Unity. I am ignorant when it comes to your speaking of the X and Y axis, I have to say. Is X aetthetic appeal and Y depth of meaning? Also, one does not have to believe in a Creator to have a mystical experience, I feel.

Belinda said: "I am currently trying to understand how an otherwise articulate person may insist that an artistic experience is not suitable material for analysis, or even of comment, because such an experience just is.

I don't get the full meaning of what you try to say here but one comment, or two (hee hee).

First, I feel that one "may" analyse an artistic experience, if it's more a "mental" awareness. If you are using the word "experience" as having a deep meaning within you because of "some thing", I feel that when we try to analyse an "experience" we lose the real meaning of it. A true experience to me is something "felt", it's wholeness in a moment, it changes us -- when we analyse it, we pull it "apart", it is not whole. Words again cannot explain what I am trying to say. So, it's really a matter of choice. I would say if we analyze something, perhaps there wasn't depth of experience and meaning there -- although aesthetic appeal, yes.

Analyzing is part of our nature -- it helps bring us towards the answers we seek -- and to more questions. Isn't it lovely?

Belinda said: I wondered if such an experiencer could be having mystical experiences caused by contemplating some works of art.

I feel YES. If not at that moment, the catalyst is there to "bring it all together" at some point in time.

Belinda said: Also I think that art is related to spiritual experience.

I feel that it can be -- though not in the sense of "spiritual" being "religious" although it can -- but "spiritual" in the sense of Man experiencing a oneness with the universe within himself.

Having said all of this, I can admit that I "know" nothing. *__-

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space." ~ Orson Scott Card

Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before. - Joseph Campbell

Enjoy your weekend, Belinda ----
Peace

[Invictus_88]

Invictus,variety of positions on the X and Y axes for aesthetic appeal and depth of meaning is very good.This sorts a problem for me: I had been thinking of both form and meaning being subsumed under aesthetic appeal. I think I may now be more able to tell some others what I mean regarding aesthetic experiences.I have now taken on board your idea. Thanks.

Please tell me, given that religious expression and aesthetic expression are the same, could very high aesthetic appeal be what is sometimes called mystical experience?

I would count the most maximal examples of beauty as a religious experience, yes.
What we find this beauty in varies between individuals, but these cases of indescribable beauty do touch us in a way that is - for me - fully fitting of description as religious experience.

[Belinda]

What we find this beauty in varies between individuals,

9invictus)

Yes indeed,invictus. However, if a statistical analysis were done, and it was found that , cross culturally, certain visual forms, smells, touches or musical intervals were judged high on the aesthetic axis, would this provide evidence that humans are evolved to find specific things aesthetically appealing?

If the analysis did so find this would give aesthetic appeal a certain objective reality.

Invictus, does your thesis about the X and Y axis have an academic source in either philosophy or psychology?If so ' I would like to read more about it.

[Invictus_88]

Such an analysis could be evidence for an evolutionary cause for the things we find aesthetically appealing, though I am not certain that it could be taken as a strong argument in itself and without deeper study. Evolutionary explanations can be a bit circular, and it is easy to forget that purely sociocultural causes can appear to be evolutionary even when they are not.

Some evolutionary preferences exist (preference here used generally, and not in an aesthetic sense), but they are usually only very strong negative preferences. A biological repugnance when faced - for example - with human fecal smells, or the taste of foul egg or meat, is a clear evolutonary trait quite divorced from social influence. To suggest that something so subtle and (it seems to me) divorced from survival and procreation may have evolutionary foundations seems improbable.

I'm quite fond of my X/Y Beauty/Meaning model. I've no idea if anyone has thought of it before, but I can only assume they have done. I'm just a second year undergraduate philosophy student, and it is not usual for us to find things that are totally new.

So although I arrived at it myself, and I am very proud of it, I am quite certain that someone, somewhere, will have published it already.

[Belinda]

Invictus, have you investigated personal construct psychology? PCP is being used by e.g. supermarkets to determine what personal constructs customers use when they are choosing what to buy. One personal construct may be based on a need for security and belonging: another PC may be based on a need to understand and make some order in life. An individual not limited to one PC amd sometimes the PC's conflict within the one person. The PC's are designated as axes. This is similar to your X and Y axes for form and meaning in art.

Would you say that for any one work of art as appreciated by one individual, the X and Y axes intersect at some point, unless the work of art is appreciated as either X or Y exclusively?

I think you have a really good idea here. I first met up with the idea of analysing a work of art as form and meaning in my undergraduate course for Humanities, but not expressing it as X and Y axes. I remember that you prefer to dichotomise as 'aesthetic' and meaning. On second thoughts, I think I prefer 'form' because it seems to me to point to further analysis into rhythm, tone, dynamics etc.


I accept what you said about evolutionary preferences. However,on the positive side, I am not sure but that certain rhythms directly influence heart beat, and that the musical intervals of a mother's lullaby , or the characteristics of her baby talk ,are the same cross-culturally.

Best wishes for your work.

[Belinda]

would count the most maximal examples of beauty as a religious experience, yes.
What we find this beauty in varies between individuals, but these cases of indescribable beauty do touch us in a way that is - for me - fully fitting of description as religious experience

(Invictus)

Given that art expresses truth as well as beauty, would you say that the most maximal examples of truth are experienced as religious? (BTW 'religious' is a 'family of meanings' word that depends for any precision on its context, so let's substitute 'mystical' for 'religious'?)

[Invictus_88]

I haven't investigated any philosophy at all, let alone PCP - and the Wikipedia page for it baffles me. I can't deduce much more from it than that he may or may not have a lot of axes on a sort of grid.

The X and Y do not necessarily have to intersect, but in all but the most extreme cases (or, perhaps more accurately, the most extreme critics!) they will do. There are only very few works which anyone could reasonably suggest are absolutely without meaning or absolutely without beauty. They are more likely to suggest that the meaning is shallow or corrupted in some way, that the technique is in some way weak, or that given the meaning the aesthetic is ill-used. The emphasis being always on the relativity or interplay of the two rather than any idea of dichotomy.

Examples of exclusive X or exclusive Y seem to exist only in such things as flowers and data-sheets, and these are not art.

[Invictus_88]

Mustical works just as well, though I haven't yet found a word I have no reservations over. Religious sounds like the Church, mystical sounds a bit new-age. We both know what we mean, though.

I find that as much as there is a clear disctinction between the nature of meaning and the nature of beauty, the two combined burn too brightly at their extremes to be clearly judged.

Taken alone, however, I would resist the suggestion that beauty can be powerful without any meaning, or that absolute truths can be powerful without beauty. The interesting thing though is not that this looks impossible, but that it would appear the maximal beauty acquires truth, and that maximal truth acquires beauty.

To try and understand them most maximally and singularly is impossible, I find.

[Belinda]

There are only very few works which anyone could reasonably suggest are absolutely without meaning or absolutely without beauty.

(invictus).

I agree.I cannot think of a single one. I wish I could. Perhaps this is because mankind is a species that tries to make meaningful patterns out of all events, so that even a nonsense poem like

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimbel in the wabe' etc

acquires meaning and makes me see pictures.

I suggest that only those works that are absolutely X or absolutely Y are those in which the X and Y axes don't intersect at some point. I cannot think of any work of art that is entirely without aesthetic appeal.('Formal merit'?)

However, I can think of at least a stage in composition when the author is thinking about rhythm, or hue, or contrasts, or some other abstract form.

I remember reading that the poet Wordsworth started on a new composition from the rhythm. A Lake district shepherd reported that W would be seen and heard walking in the hills 'Bumbumbumin' to himself.

I also think that there is intrisic beauty in the Elvish language in Lord of the Rings, whereas the language of the Orcs is intrinsically ugly.

The language of the King James version of The Bible is widely regarded as stately and feeling, even by those who despise many of the religious messages.Intrinsic beauty again.

http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabb ... wocky.html

[NameRemoved]

Scott I can only speak for myself on how I judge my art. I was trained in singing dance and drama..degree level a few years ago now..strangely I ended up doing music. after i left my studies and uni..I was visiting a friend who could play guitar and basic keybard chords. He told me he could teach me to play Let it be by the Beatles in a matter of a few minutes. He did, I played it as the chord progression is quite easy to play. From then I was hooked on learning and self taught myself the basic chords and sharps and flats and add 9s etc.. I loved playing the keyboards. Yamaha and Korg synths being my favorits. Since then i have found myself composing songs and tunes accompanied by my keyboards and although my friends loved my compositions..if I listened back to them I was my toughest critic. I wanted it perfect. tighter better quality, sounds I could hear in my head I wanted added etc..So artists are more self critical than most think. But when the whole thing comes together there is a great sense of accomplishment and finishing something so precious and worked for with the love of doing it mixed with the anguish of getting there.

[Haller]

Why you judge it with your heart... and the set of beliefs instilled in you by your environment and genealogy...

[ape]

How Do You Judge Art?

How I judge art is just as I, as a jugde or juror or critic, wd judge art as in Buchwald or Mooney or etc:

With a heART full of Love and Respect of the good and bad for whatever art is good or bad art in my opinion in any and in all aspects of life.

This Frame of Mind or Heart is the only proper and right way to make a fair judgment of any art in any sphere of the Universe.

Example: The only fair and righteous way to judge art drawn by any racist named Art is with Love in heART for hatists and lovers, for the good and bad, for black and white, for etc and etc and for every kind of art and all kinds of art.

"I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."
Vincent Van Gogh