Response to Brittany Noyes's Post at on 10/29/11 at 2:50pm

What is the art medium that people least identify with or enjoy?


Extreme Under-water Basket Weaving.


I'm just kidding, the form of art that people least identify with or enjoy would probably be some forms of dance or sculpting, both of which aren't usually considered when talking about art. I would say visual arts such as paintings and drawings are referenced the most, followed by music, sculptures, and dance. The less we familiarize with these latter forms of art, the less we can identify with them, and therefore (as I argue), the less aesthetic quality pertains to them.


Enjoyment is, of course, a form of pleasure, or alludes to the pleasure received. As we've now had drilled into our heads with the power-tool of redundancy, pleasure is subjective. This is not to say, however, that we can't make inferences based on historical accounts and social observations. However, I don't think I'm personally equipped with the knowledge or experience to deduce which form(s) of art provide the public with the least aesthetic pleasure.


I wonder: Is there any form of art where the feelings of which are objective; namely, everyone shares the same opinion based on observation, and receives the same aesthetic emotion thereof?

Interesting Proposal

Branching off of my previous post, I had a theory come to mind when I realized how difficult it is to define art or aesthetics because of the wide range of artistic categories. And then it hit me; has anyone ever tried to define the small, specific, closed concept forms of art, and then defined art as anything that fits into one or more of those categories?

Granted, this may not seem like a venerated definition for such a grand thing as art, but it certainly does get the mechanical nonsense of "what is art?" out of the way. And in light of my recent statement, true art is not the emotional or subjective perception of itself; it is the physical, sensible form of which the emotions or subjective feelings are evoked from. The non-mechanical aspects of art, I would argue, deal primarily with aesthetics, not the art itself.

My question to you is, is this an acceptable approach to defining art?

Concepts.

In our short reading this week, we discussed the principles of open concepts and closed concepts. Open concepts are those which have no limit to the amount of defining conditions for the object at hand, closed concepts are those which have a set, clear limit to the amount of necessary defining conditions. One thing I've noticed is the specific objects tend to have closed concepts whereas the broader objects tend to have open concepts. This is expected, of course, since specific objects, such as an apple, require less "umbrella" features than broader concepts, such as food. When giving the necessary conditions for an apple, you give it's specific defining features. However, when giving the definition for food, each condition must satisfy every object that could be considered food, but at the same time no object that isn't food can contain all of the defining principles. For instance, if you were to define a healthy, growing empire apple, you may list its defining conditions as red and tart. However, under food, these conditions can't appear, since spaghetti is yellow and not tart at all, but is still considered food. Satisfying these conditions is difficult, but rewarding when the definition can finally become closed.

A second point that I've noticed about concepts is that those objects with mathematical basis tend to be closed concepts. This is because mathematical proof is indubitably fortifying evidence, provided the analysis is correct. For instance, in class Johnson used the triangle as an example, since triangles have specific parameters under which they can be called triangles (interior angles add up to 180 degrees, 3 sides, all connect at vertices.)

My question is this: Would you argue that broader concept have less conditions or more conditions than specific concepts?