Baudry Rose 2008

[kirk wallace]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
My two centsArtifacts, like trees, tables, and chairs, exist independent of value judgments. Labeling an artifact "art" is an established way, mostly confined the western european culture, of charging more for it. Art is like Santa Claus: a well-established concept for something that doesn't exist.

You are making two different claims. One, that art is a western concept, in terms of the way we talk about it here, is true, though even that needs qualification since the fact that the concept is western doesn't prove that the concept doesn't correspond to a natural reality. Newtonian physics is a western concept too.

The second doesn't respond to an analytic as all. No one denies that trees (which are not, by the way, artifacts) or chairs and tables (which are artifacts but not artworks) exist independently of aesthetic judgments (though, again, chairs and tables may not exist independently of the purposes, which do entail judgments, for which they were made). The question is whether one can describe analytically a kind of judgment made about them. As long as you fixate on whether aesthetic judgments are objective or not, you will be arguing only to a very narrow range of aesthetic theory.

I've seen many that were; and a fantastic settee or 2 as well.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by kirk wallace:
who says chairs and tables are not artworks?

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
My two centsArtifacts, like trees, tables, and chairs, exist independent of value judgments. Labeling an artifact "art" is an established way, mostly confined the western european culture, of charging more for it. Art is like Santa Claus: a well-established concept for something that doesn't exist.

You are making two different claims. One, that art is a western concept, in terms of the way we talk about it here, is true, though even that needs qualification since the fact that the concept is western doesn't prove that the concept doesn't correspond to a natural reality. Newtonian physics is a western concept too.

The second doesn't respond to an analytic as all. No one denies that trees (which are not, by the way, artifacts) or chairs and tables (which are artifacts but not artworks) exist independently of aesthetic judgments (though, again, chairs and tables may not exist independently of the purposes, which do entail judgments, for which they were made). The question is whether one can describe analytically a kind of judgment made about them. As long as you fixate on whether aesthetic judgments are objective or not, you will be arguing only to a very narrow range of aesthetic theory.

I've seen many that were; and a fantastic settee or 2 as well.

And in order to describe what you mean when you say that, assuming you really mean it, Kant would be very helpful to you. Concerns about canonic objectivity (either pro or con) won't much.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Same goes for painted canvas, Oswaldo, right?

Yes, a painted canvas is an objective reality, whereas calling it a masterpiece is not.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by kirk wallace:
who says chairs and tables are not artworks?

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
My two centsArtifacts, like trees, tables, and chairs, exist independent of value judgments. Labeling an artifact "art" is an established way, mostly confined the western european culture, of charging more for it. Art is like Santa Claus: a well-established concept for something that doesn't exist.

You are making two different claims. One, that art is a western concept, in terms of the way we talk about it here, is true, though even that needs qualification since the fact that the concept is western doesn't prove that the concept doesn't correspond to a natural reality. Newtonian physics is a western concept too.

The second doesn't respond to an analytic as all. No one denies that trees (which are not, by the way, artifacts) or chairs and tables (which are artifacts but not artworks) exist independently of aesthetic judgments (though, again, chairs and tables may not exist independently of the purposes, which do entail judgments, for which they were made). The question is whether one can describe analytically a kind of judgment made about them. As long as you fixate on whether aesthetic judgments are objective or not, you will be arguing only to a very narrow range of aesthetic theory.

I've seen many that were; and a fantastic settee or 2 as well.

My point was that you can call ANYTHING art, a settee as much as a painting, because it is an attribution/projection made by the subject, not an objective characteristic of the thing itself. You can call wine art, you can call painting art, you can call a chair and a table art. But you can't call a table a chair (even if you can sit on it) or call a painting a bottle of wine. Now whether there's any use to calling anything art is another matter altogether. I, personally, see little use, other than charging more money.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
You are making two different claims. One, that art is a western concept, in terms of the way we talk about it here, is true, though even that needs qualification since the fact that the concept is western doesn't prove that the concept doesn't correspond to a natural reality. Newtonian physics is a western concept too.

True, but when a concept is culture specific, I am more skeptical than when all peoples seem to have it.

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The second doesn't respond to an analytic as all. No one denies that trees (which are not, by the way, artifacts) or chairs and tables (which are artifacts but not artworks) exist independently of aesthetic judgments (though, again, chairs and tables may not exist independently of the purposes, which do entail judgments, for which they were made). The question is whether one can describe analytically a kind of judgment made about them. As long as you fixate on whether aesthetic judgments are objective or not, you will be arguing only to a very narrow range of aesthetic theory.

I certainly didn't mean to say that trees are artifacts.

With the exception of sensations that are physiologically unpleasant to all human beings (like drinking ammonia), I see all aesthetic judgments as entirely subjective and, to varying degrees, culture specific, so don't need to fixate on the issue. It's a given.

 

[kirk wallace]

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

My point was that you can call ANYTHING art, a settee as much as a painting, because it is an attribution/projection made by the subject, not an objective characteristic of the thing itself. You can call wine art, you can call painting art, you can call a chair and a table art. But you can't call a table a chair (even if you can sit on it) or call a painting a bottle of wine. Now whether there's any use to calling anything art is another matter altogether. I, personally, see little use, other than charging more money.

I thought that (the naming/calling point) was clear, Oswaldo; that is why I bristled at Prof L's comment about chairs and tables. And indeed, the really well made ones, may indeed be made with art in mind -- not to get in to the whole question of does "art" have to be "intended" by the fabricator to be "art"; I think your found (discovered?) objects post some time ago raised that rather nicely -- and in any event they (be it chairs, tables, wine or paintings), i think attempt to do something more than the purely utilitarian: a painting may just be covering an unsightly wall, a wine may just be an answer to thirst or sobriety, a chair may just be a means for not sitting on the ground. Once the widget moves beyond the purely functional, the "art element" begins to sneak in. Some widget-makers, whether intentionally or not do a "better" job, make a prettier or more interesting widget; and that I think is where art begins. I think art can be edible and drinkable. (And there we get back to Oswaldo's original observation about price.)

 

[Jeff Grossman]

When is a chair to be called "throne"? Is that akin to calling it "art"?

 

[Steven Spielmann]

Jonathan - I know what you're saying. There are some extra steps to the argument here. "The pleasure one gets from its sensual apprehension" can ground a judgment of agreeability or beauty, depending on how that pleasure is cognized (do I categorize the pleasure as contingent on my private idiosyncrasies, or as a necessary delight?). But basically you're right as far as Kant goes. While I agree with Kant that no list of properties possessed by x is necessary or sufficient for x's being beautiful, I also think that the properties of a beautiful x are the only communicative devices available to us to lead someone to it's beauty - and that at least in certain instances they work to perform this function. I have a lot more to say about this, including some analysis of which parts are plausibly in Kant and which parts I am borrowing from later thinkers or making up, but I think there's a consistent overall picture to be had here.

Oswaldo - fun. Clearly the word 'art' has various applications to various objects with various kinds and degrees of social sanction, so there's a trivial extensional sense in which there are artworks relative to our language at any given time and even over its history. What I presume you deny is either (1) that there is any useful and/or coherent common pattern(s) in those uses or (2) that as a matter of anthropological fact there may be one historically, but it no longer holds today, and so whatever unity once may have held this concept together has now evaporated.

I would disagree with the denial of (1) but I think whether or not to deny (2) may be an ethical question. Have to mull that over more.

I think chairs and tables can be art although they aren't usually.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
You are making two different claims. One, that art is a western concept, in terms of the way we talk about it here, is true, though even that needs qualification since the fact that the concept is western doesn't prove that the concept doesn't correspond to a natural reality. Newtonian physics is a western concept too.

True, but when a concept is culture specific, I am more skeptical than when all peoples seem to have it.

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The second doesn't respond to an analytic as all. No one denies that trees (which are not, by the way, artifacts) or chairs and tables (which are artifacts but not artworks) exist independently of aesthetic judgments (though, again, chairs and tables may not exist independently of the purposes, which do entail judgments, for which they were made). The question is whether one can describe analytically a kind of judgment made about them. As long as you fixate on whether aesthetic judgments are objective or not, you will be arguing only to a very narrow range of aesthetic theory.

I certainly didn't mean to say that trees are artifacts.

With the exception of sensations that are physiologically unpleasant to all human beings (like drinking ammonia), I see all aesthetic judgments as entirely subjective and, to varying degrees, culture specific, so don't need to fixate on the issue. It's a given.

With all due respect, these are non responses on both counts. Not all cultures have the concept of Newtonian physics. Those that existed before Newton didn't. And the question of whether the Greeks knew about gravity but didn't have a concept for it, or didn't know about it at all, is a considerably controverted one. I think it's at least theoretically possible that the post-Renaissance concept of art (which is what we are debating)does correspond to what cultures do when they create things we designate as artworks. Evidence in favor, by the way, is that many cultures have things we designate as artworks and, although it is we westerners who pick those things out in a particular way, 1)we pick out the same things generally, which is at least interesting if we are merely doing this subjectively and 2)we tend to pick out things that the culture also picks out though it explains its choice differently. Evidence against, and its not minimal (I'm not claiming that we know art not to be culturally specific, only that we don't know it is) is exactly that they explain what they pick out differently and those explanations are pretty deeply culturally imbedded and not easily translatable into our ideas of art, sometimes. I have in mind, for instance, items that regularly get displayed as art that played a role in various practices meant to affect the workings of nature.

With regard to your second point, I was precisely claiming that it's far from self-evident that it is a given that aesthetic judgment is subjective. You may be right, but I think you have no ground to assume the point. Even on the question of whether the evaluation of particular artworks is subjective (a very narrow and not overwhelming interesting segment of aesthetics) about which I agree with you, again the conclusion is very far from a given.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

Steven,

If in using the word "agreeable," we are following the Pluhar translation, then there is no judgment of agreeability. He uses the word, as he indicates at various points, as synonymous with pleasure-giving or "what the senses like." We don't judge those things or even cognize them. We merely have them. That's what I mean by saying (in company with most other Kant critics for once) that pleasures are opaque for him.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
With regard to your second point, I was precisely claiming that it's far from self-evident that it is a given that aesthetic judgment is subjective. You may be right, but I think you have no ground to assume the point. Even on the question of whether the evaluation of particular artworks is subjective (a very narrow and not overwhelming interesting segment of aesthetics) about which I agree with you, again the conclusion is very far from a given.

I don't think I claimed it was self-evident, only that I believed it to be true (barring physiological exceptions). I think the onus of proof lies with those who claim absolutes, not subjectives (not your case, I realize).

The most interesting issue for me in aesthetics is whether there is such a thing as absolute quality - can one say, as more than merely a matter of opinion, that Michelangelo is greater than Torregiano, that Matisse is greater than Dufy? I believe we cannot. I believe we can only say we prefer x to y, etc. People are free to call wine a work of art but that doesn't make it so, or anything else like a painting so, simply because I don't believe in "art" as something that exists objectively (other than as a concept like Santa).

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
With regard to your second point, I was precisely claiming that it's far from self-evident that it is a given that aesthetic judgment is subjective. You may be right, but I think you have no ground to assume the point. Even on the question of whether the evaluation of particular artworks is subjective (a very narrow and not overwhelming interesting segment of aesthetics) about which I agree with you, again the conclusion is very far from a given.

I don't think I claimed it was self-evident, only that I believed it to be true (barring physiological exceptions). I think the onus of proof lies with those who claim absolutes, not subjectives (not your case, I realize).

The most interesting issue for me in aesthetics is whether there is such a thing as absolute quality - can one say, as more than merely a matter of opinion, that Michelangelo is greater than Torregiano, that Matisse is greater than Dufy? I believe we cannot. I believe we can only say we prefer x to y, etc. People are free to call wine a work of art but that doesn't make it so, or anything else like a painting so, simply because I don't believe in "art" as something that exists objectively (other than as a concept like Santa).

Believing something to be true is one thing. Asserting its truth without warrant is another. Given the history of the debate, I think both positions demand warrant.

As I said, I agree with you that evaluation of the beauty of particular works (what you call absolute quality)can only be both subjective and individually variable. As I also said, there are arguments on both sides of the question. The most important defense of your (our to an extent) position is the historical failure to determine aesthetic principles that would adequately ground evaluations. There have been aesthetic principles of course but they have either been to abstract to produce agreed upon determinations (object a has lots of purposiveness without purpose and object be lacks that vital quality) or they have been insufficiently concrete to be meaningfully helpful (great poetry has the grand style). And so theories of objective evaluation come down to I know it when I see it, which isn't an argument.

On the other hand, since Hume, those who argue that there is objective evaluation have noted the range of agreement about certain great works. You may think it is merely a matter of opinion that Michelangelo is greater than Dufy, but your choice of Michelangelo is hardly accidental. And while there are exceptions (Melville for instance), despite the falsism that great artists are not recognized as such by their contemporaries, it is historically surprising how many of them--Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Dickens and Eliot--were so recognized. Now there have been a lot of very persuasive historical explanations for how those evaluations have come into being and why one should therefore be skeptical of their normativity. And saying "but we all know that Mozart is better than that other guy" isn't sufficient to prove objectivity. But it's also true that the historical explanations are indicidative but not sufficient explanations and the fact of the regularity of evaluation at least deserves to be taken as a hortatory embarrasment for subjective claims.

And finally, as a matter of taste, I find the question of evaluation about the least interesting aspect of aesthetics. The real interesting part (as a matter of taste) is the question over whether and how we can define art objects and whether and how we can define what we do when we see ourselves as having an aesthetic apprehension. And with regard to these questions, not as a matter of taste, the subjectivist position isn't so much proveably wrong but like a complete solipsism as an epistemological position, completely uninteresting.

 

[Steven Spielmann]

Oswaldo -

VLM brought that up on Wine Berserkers the other day. Some other time I will get back to it here, but I fear I've committed enough sins already. Liked that Baudry Rose though.

Jonathan -

Suspect we're just looking at different translations. Kant divides up judgments of taste according to quality into judgments of agreeability, beauty, and goodness. (Another translation has pleasantness, beauty, and goodness; but I wouldn't dream of using the word pleasant there myself because of its connection to pleasure, which for Kant is subjective and brute or, as you put it, opaque.)

This has been a useful discussion for me and I am now incorporating some things that have come out of it into a book I'm working on, so thanks. I probably won't be back on here for a few days though...however, some Pigato and Rossese in the queue for tonight, so don't feel too bad on my behalf.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
And finally, as a matter of taste, I find the question of evaluation about the least interesting aspect of aesthetics. The real interesting part (as a matter of taste) is the question over whether and how we can define art objects and whether and how we can define what we do when we see ourselves as having an aesthetic apprehension. And with regard to these questions, not as a matter of taste, the subjectivist position isn't so much proveably wrong but like a complete solipsism as an epistemological position, completely uninteresting.

I agree with much of what you wrote, however many things which we hold most dear cannot be proven, and those we must either simply assert as a matter or faith or stay silent, as Wittgenstein recommended. I most certainly agree with you that the near-unanimity of several reputations is hardly proof of objective, non-cultural superiority. Where we really part company is in what we find interesting. I don't find at all interesting the question over whether and how we can define art objects (because I don't believe they exist, other that as a fetishistic projection) whereas whether and how we can define what we do when we see ourselves as having an aesthetic apprehension is also of little interest to me because we are so massively conditioned by our cultural programming that we can never know how much of what we're feeling is innate or learned. I am content to feel, weakly or strongly, resigned to my subjectivity, and have abandoned any desire to identify what I feel as any kind of universal. Now off to Roagna!

 

[Tom Glasgow]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
For the namers and callers.When is a chair to be called "throne"? Is that akin to calling it "art"?

Not sure the commenters to this thread appreciate your attempt at bathroom humor. Perhaps a different venue might be more appropriate.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by Tom Glasgow:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
For the namers and callers.When is a chair to be called "throne"? Is that akin to calling it "art"?

Not sure the commenters to this thread appreciate your attempt at bathroom humor. Perhaps a different venue might be more appropriate.

Oh, dear. That wasn't bathroom humor.

My point is that a "throne" is different from a chair because of how it is used. So, as a label, is it akin to calling something "art" (...so that Westerners can pay more to see it or own it...) or is a functional name something different?

 

[Levi Dalton]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Tom Glasgow:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
For the namers and callers.When is a chair to be called "throne"? Is that akin to calling it "art"?

Not sure the commenters to this thread appreciate your attempt at bathroom humor. Perhaps a different venue might be more appropriate.

Oh, dear. That wasn't bathroom humor.

My point is that a "throne" is different from a chair because of how it is used. So, as a label, is it akin to calling something "art" (...so that Westerners can pay more to see it or own it...) or is a functional name something different?

Jeff, I think he got your point, but was being humorous in bringing up that a "throne" can also refer to a toilet.

I subjectively judged it to be a funny remark. Others, in a different context, might have viewed the remark differently.

The Moon hung heavy in the sky tonight. Or maybe what was pushing it aloft was ebbing.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Steven Spielmann:
Oswaldo -

Jonathan -

Suspect we're just looking at different translations. Kant divides up judgments of taste according to quality into judgments of agreeability, beauty, and goodness. (Another translation has pleasantness, beauty, and goodness; but I wouldn't dream of using the word pleasant there myself because of its connection to pleasure, which for Kant is subjective and brute or, as you put it, opaque.)

OK, I'm lost. The division into qualities is the opening of the analytic. He there divides off likings of the good and the agreeable from the judgment of taste. We don't judge that which is agreeable, but merely perceive it. In the Pluhart translation: "All liking (so it is said or thought) is itself a sensation (of a pleasure). Hence whatever is liked, precisely inasmuch as it is liked, is agreeable."

He probably shouldn't speak of a liking of the good because we approve of it via the reason, and thus, again, don't judge it but cognize it according to its concepts. Again the Pluhart translation: "Good is what, by means of reason, we like through its mere concept."

If these are the divisions you are speaking of, he isn't dividing the judgment of taste into judgments of agreeability, good and beauty. He's defining the quality of indifference or disinterest (not really a good translation for the negation word he uses as a nonce word)in terms of its contrast to other responses that adjoin it but are responses of different faculties. If you have some other passage in mind, I don't know it.

Oswaldo,
My point about canons was not that the arguments based on them were no good at all, though I think that they are hardly definitive, but that they need to be taken seriously and not dismissed out of hand. On the other hand, since you don't think that a class of things called artworks exists, I don't even see the basis of an interest in how they are evaluated. It would be like being interested in how we evaluate unicorns. I also find your dismissal of the class equally lacking in any obvious warrant.

 

[Thor]

(I know Thor disagrees with me, but his practice doesn't make his point for me, alas)

I disagree with you to the extent that I think it's an achievable goal, not that I'm achieving it. The point, for me, is that it's a journey and one can be on it or not.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Thor:

(I know Thor disagrees with me, but his practice doesn't make his point for me, alas)

I disagree with you to the extent that I think it's an achievable goal, not that I'm achieving it. The point, for me, is that it's a journey and one can be on it or not.

A fair point. I'll revise to say that, at least as of now, in practice that's what I see tasting notes as doing. I can't disprove the theoretical possibility of a tasting note that did point directly to taste sensations and communicate them adequately, though I suspect that such tasting notes will be in some language other than the two in which I can currently read them and probably in a technical language yet to be developed.