Aesthetic Judgement

The amazing thing, to me, is that many volumes of turgid prose have been written on the subject of 'aesthetics' by people who claim that 'beauty is the eye of the beholder.' If this is so, then how can one justify a tome of 4,000 pages discussing beauty?

A problem worthy of our attention.

..…the eye can be influenced.

Ever thought something was beautiful, but now you find it to be ugly or vice cersa?

Exactly. Many people claim that beauty is subjective, yet they don't practice this belief.

very true


what we perceive as beautiful is very personal - I love the coast, the wildness, the skies and ever changing colours and the changing tides, I don't mind that there are often only a few trees struggling to survive except in the sheltered valleys (my first love is the west coast here). It may be influenced by the fact that I grew up by the sea, the Jesuits say 'give me a boy till he's 7 and I'll give you the man. At that age I lived in Gibraltar (blue Mediterranean, steep hills, plants and greenery) and then Cornwall (wild Atlantic gales, surf, ever changing colours and tide, narrow lanes with trees meeting overhead, banks of wild flowers) and I loved it.

My father grew up in his formative years in Hampshire and has a deep love of woods and forests (which make me feel claustrophic if I'm in them for too long) and feels Cornwall is too barren except in small areas (IT IS NOT!!! )

Maybe it is that early influence or maybe we would have felt that way anyway, I don't know but we have very different aesthetic ideas - as do we all.

In paintings I want, usually, emotion, interesting use of paint and marks - painterliness and passion. Another wants restraint, photo realism or purely concept.

There cannot be a universal aesthetic ideal.

Often people can be brought to look again at something they'd never considered interesting or beautiful. A painter with a passion for barren landscapes or industrial scenes or the wet mud in a tidal creek can make people look again and suddenly notice a certain kind of aesthetic appeal that they had overlooked before.

Ray, you ask: "Ever thought something was beautiful, but now you find it to be ugly or vice [v]ersa?"
Yes, all the time, and that is evidence for the profound subjectivity of art and beauty. When we use the term, subjectivity, we usually refer to inter-individual differences in thinking and perceiving "the world." In this case, we are referring to intra-individual differences. We are not static "beings" (fixed things); we are constantly changing or "becoming" processes. No wonder I now dislike (or like) a work of art I previously liked (or disliked).
But we mustn't think that subjectivity refers to something unreal. The subjectivity of human experience is an objective fact.

"The subjectivity of human experience is an objective fact."






<repeat once then>

...and tacky theme parks.)

On art - I know more about visual arts of design and painting than I do of music, much as I like generally like music.

I think there are some proportions that induce a sense of rest to the human eye and mind, perhaps the human eyes and minds in only some cultures - there is a reason the golden mean seems to work, or the horizon line just so seems right - and some directionality that conveys movement, or possibly un-restfulness, again possibly just for some cultures as opposed to all humans.

I once defined beauty for me as not prettyness, but 'fit', and there I got into trouble trying to describe fit. Not as in jigsaw puzzle fit, but as being an engaging complex of matters of balance (or imbalance), movement (or stillness), depth (or flatness), light and dark contrasts (or not), color associations, and so on, into and including symbolic or representational connotations, all of which might not cohere for others; someone else might think it all ugly.

I'm not facile at talking about this, but I think there are some cultural agreements on good art and plenty of disagreements, eye of the beholder responses, but, as I said, possibly some natural human responses past cultural having to do with human proportion, and human physiology.

Which is not to say a horizon at dead center isn't good art - it may be part of the play in achieving 'fit'.

Aesthetic Judgement Good & Bad Art
I think we may all be barking up the wrong tree...that our approach, even in wording the question as it has been worded is faulty.
To begin, it is accepted in this day and age that if an artist calls his production a work of art, it is so accepted as such.
Secondly, of course we are ALL going to have different opinions about different works of art...each of us speaks subjectively from our own vision and psyche, and we do not even know if we see the art object in the same physical way.
Perhaps, we ought to approach the work of art with more respect...not that we have to feel it is good or beautiful...but just try to find out why it is where it is, why it was produced, how it was produced,how it is constructed physically and aesthetically, and what influences it may have had on other art.
If each of us looks individually, and with clear focus (a lot to ask?) at many many different works of art from different areas of the world, from many different time periods it will be probably that experience will refine our judgement as to what constitutes "quality" in art.
I think we are all to prone to find "good" or "bad", "moral" or "evil", as applies to things and people in our lives. It seems to me that it would be better if we tried to LEARN to KNOW to UNDERSTAND.
Here is an example of gross ignorance, which led to a decision that a particular work of art at the Brooklyn Museum was not a good work of art, and was evil. It was a painting of the Madonna & Child, using manure as one of the mixed media on the surface. The mayor of NYC tried to stop the exhibition and close down the museum, because he felt that the painting was blasphemous. What this art ignorant man did not know was that in the native village in Africa, where the artist came from, manure was used as a medium in building and decorating.

Was it human manure or that of beasts?I rather think we need to know and if it was that of humans which humans precisely?It is one thing using human manure quarried from a communal latrine in Borneo to using that of a named person who signs on the bottom.

aesthetic judgement
ah, spendius...I hear the voice of the person who saw the puppy amble up, not knowing if he was sterilized...to the person who produced the madonna and child, to that person coming from another culture than our own, his attitude towards manure was very different from out own.
And I might add that to the farmer, in different parts of the world, manure is a valuable material. I know they sell it here in the garden store.
You are too rigid about your own productions.
You prove my point...we judge before we understand, usually from our very own narrow perspectives.

spendious, you're too much. To think that otherwise intelligent persons would fall for it, too!

G-S, and that mayor may be the next republican nominee for president (Guliani).
Osso, a difficult point well expressed.

Re: Aesthetic Judgement Good & Bad Art


I agree with you that the mayor of NYC was mistaken in his judgement of the painting. But he was mistaken not because he judged it to be a bad work of art, but because he judged it to be an immoral work of art. This was a mistake because, I believe, art cannot be morally right or morally wrong. Art cannot be moral because, as Kant says, aesthetic judgement has nothing to do with moral judgement. For example, despite the fact that I condemn the views and behaviour of Hitler's Nazi party, I still think the swastika is quite a good-looking symbol. My aesthetic judgement of the swastika ignores what it morally stands for, because that is not what aesthetic jusgement is all about.

So the mayor made a mistake, because however blasphemous a piece of artwork might be has no bearing on whether it is a good piece of art. But if he had just said, "this is a bad piece of art," why is that ignorant?

In my view, a good work of art is a beautiful work of art, and a bad work of art is an ugly work of art. If aesthetic judgements cannot be universal, and we can only have personal opinions about whether a piece of art is beautiful, then there is no real beauty - only personal perception. If there is no such thing as beauty, why do we hand out awards for paintings, films, music, etc.? If it's all a matter of personal taste, then the Oscars, for example, are completely meaningless, because films can never be good or beautiful themselves - they can only be percieved as beautiful by certain people.

I think that's all rubbish. Art can be universally beautiful or ugly.

Re: Aesthetic Judgement Good & Bad Art


but art doesn't have to be beautiful - Goya's picture of a firing squad or mutilated corpses hanging in trees aren't beautiful but they are powerful, as is Guernica, which I also wouldn't consider beautiful.

Ah, but in my sense of art, I do think those works have beauty, the beauty of 'fit'.

Aesthetic Judgement
Firstly, the swastika. It is an Indian form, abstract, signifying "good luck".
That Hitler chose to attach himself to the form says more about Hitler than it does about the swastika. If Hitler sat regularly on a particular park bench, would that make the bench immoral?
Of course, each person will determine for himself what is beautiful. And that judgement call will be dependent on many factors, maybe because that painting used a particular red which makes the person remember his nurse when he was a kid. Who knows!!! Not even the person himself may know why he likes something.
This does not mean that a group of knowledgeable experienced art lovers will not agree that a particular work of art may or may not be beautiful...but one has to look further than the surface judgement in judging the worth of the opinion itself.
Indeed one has to look further than the surface judgement...Consider this: An art fancier may look upon a Rembrandt painting with a good deal of appreciation feeling that the painting is very beautiful, beautifully done, pleasing to his eye and very valuable. However, that same art fancier may look upon a sculpture from Ife or a Japanese pot from the 15th century Bizen kiln with complete distaste and disinterest, EVEN THOUGH the sculpture and the pot are considered to be of very high genius by experienced art critics.
It is laudatory that an individual would find beauty in a work of art...for any reason really. Indeed, whether we will it or not, we WILL find beauty in some works of art, not in others. But judgements are based upon individual characteristics, most of which may be unimportant in judging the actual "quality" of a particular work of art. Experience and knowledge must not be discounted.

I once concieved what I thought was a work of art symbolising our predicament.

On a business visit to a sewage plant I noticed a large trailer placed beneath a pipe jutting out of the wall extruding a two inch (approx) diameter plasticine like substance into it.I was told it was sold to local farmers for spreading on the fields.
Musing on this later in the bath I wondered what it would cost to buy a trailer full and have it compressed into a perfect cube,dried and polished to a marble like finish and submitted to the Tate Gallery for exhibition under the title The Classless Society with Tomato Skins and Pips.

What do art lovers think of that and do they have any suggestions as to how the aesthetic beauty could be rendered more profound.