Table of Contents
Aesthetic Judgement
Different Art Forms
| art form | performance | non-performance |
|---|---|---|
| literature | poetry reading, theatre | fiction, poetry, drama |
| music | classical, pop, folk | - |
| dance | ballet, modern/contemporary, traditional | - |
| visual | - | painting/drawing, sculpture, fashion design |
| cinema | - | entertainment, art house, documentary |
| architecture | - | modern, traditional, everyday |
Content and Form: Representational and Abstract Art
in language, we can distinguish between the content of a sentence and its form – e.g.
- “John loves Mary”,
- “Mary is loved by John”: same content, different form,
- “John hates Mary”: same form, different content;
this distinction can also be applied in the case of works of art, although it may not always be obvious what the content or the form are.
art that has a clear content is called representational, other art, which appears not to be about anything, is called abstract.
| art form | content | form |
|---|---|---|
| literature | story, plot, setting | division into acts or chapters, rhyme and metre, vocabulary |
| music | lyrics, but also (the form of) emotions (Susanne K. Langer) | structure, e.g. verses, instrumentation, dynamics and speed |
| dance | ||
| visual | ||
| cinema | ||
| architecture |
Genres and Styles
High Art and Low Art?
What do We Base Aesthetic Judgements on?
it may help to think of art as a form of communication that we can compare with language:
sound, text
language: speaker/writer =======================> listener/reader
language
object, event (= it)
art: artist (= he/she) =======================> audience, spectators, ... (= me)
genre, style + critics (= they)
note: a critic is a specialist who helps us understand a (purported) work of art better, and thereby enables us to evaluate it – so I read critics even after I have attended a concert or finished a novel;
a good piece of criticism, including a good literature lesson in school, should enable me to understand, appreciate and hopefully enjoy a work more.
so when judging a (purported) work of art we can use
- he/she: the artist's intention, (“If I say I have made a work of art, you must accept it as a work of art.”) his/her background, period, biography;
- me: the spectator's or audience's feelings and emotions (“I know what I like!” or: “Everyone likes it, so it is a great song.”)
- it: properties of the work itself, formal aspects like balance, use of colour, intensity, ORIGINALITY;
- they: the general consensus, especially of informed specialists who have studied the art form, (“It must be a great work because I saw it in the museum.”)
for each of these ways, there have been people arguing that it is the only correct one, but in practice we use all of these.
