Same! Its so rediculous to me how there are people today who want to make it out as some evil thing that strips meaning 😂 Its litterally about recognising that something can have more than one meaning! In some sence its litterally about giving things more meaning, rather than less. What it just isnt about tho, is about beeing naive. People who go against it in a knee-jerk way, tend to either not understand the idea that its proponens are trying to share, or they are, wierdly, payed to do it, like in the case of jordan peterson and other far right wing pundants who naivelly hold the metanerrative of judeo-christian values ( which are only a recent theme, since islam is also a part of that tradition, as well as the fact that thease two cultured have been opposed to one another for a long time, which suggests to me the invention of an artificial conection rather than an acknowledgement of how they were already conected within their literary traditions, tho not in society) Anyway, i brought up that tangent because of the fact that peterson was the one who mislead me to be against postmodernism several years ago when i was still idolising public figures- damn was that a psychologic nightmare. The ideology that peterson sells, i can best describe as " when a crybully goes up to you, and tells you that he will protect you if you give him money, and then after you ask who the protection is from, they tell you, its from themselves 😂, and then after a whille you developing stokholm syndrome towards the bully, whare y you believe that he is actually doing things for yourown good" Thats what peterson does. He sends ya into nihilism, then closes the doors to get out ( i.e. post modernism) and then offers, not "God", but instead, the belief that we should live "as if god exists" as if god is an apriory assumption that comes about naturally from observation of the world. So his goal here is to make you so confuzed about who and what you are and about how to observe the world, to pile on a fu*k ton of contridictions in your brain, and then to talk to you as if you are beeing skeptical when you follow him, and then tells you " pretend god exists cuz its the best we can do" Like, the ideological nightmare he has trapped people in, and has likelly trapped himself in, is just beyond sad to me . However be the case, there are ways out- genuinelly becoming skeptical is one of the best ways Have a lovely day
So, my takes on the four pillars of modernist aesthetics, and you tell me whether this is a "modernist" or "postmodernist" take or (as I expect, and would like) something that transcends both of them: 1. It can be an objective fact that a piece of art is or isn't successful at doing whatever it is meant to do (see below for qualification there), and it can also be an objective "fact" (or the moral equivalent of a fact at least) that something or another ought to be done or not. Between these two things, it's possible to judge how objectively good a piece of art is: how successful it is at doing something that ought to be done. However, since art works are speech-acts, success as doing anything depends on the audience: a work of art could be objectively successful at doing something to one audience, but not be fit for doing that same thing to a different audience, and the success of the art depends then on what audience it's presented to, which is a part of the art itself (since to be art just is to be presented to an audience for the purposes of evoking some reaction). 2. Art, being a kind of speech-act, means different things in different senses of the word "means": in one sense, it means what the artist meant it to mean, because that's what that sense of "means" means, it refers to the intention behind it, the same way that when I say something I mean something by my words; but, in another sense, my words might mean to you something different than I meant for them to mean, and likewise art, being a kind of speech-act, can mean something different to an audience than the artist meant for it to mean. The artist means something *by* the art, and the art means something *to* the audience, and those things might not be the same thing -- in which case, the art is unsuccessful, and thus, "bad" in that sense, though an audience can make it harder for art to be "good" by being bad at understanding what artists mean. Miscommunication is a two-way street. 3. Art can be meant to represent reality, or it can not be meant for that. That's just one thing art can be used for, among many. If it is used for that, it can succeed or fail at that, to varying degrees. If it's not being used for that, the question of its success at that is irrelevant. 4. Given that art can be evaluated at all (see point 1), we can get better at it over time, both in the sense of being more successful at doing what we're trying to do with it, and in the sense of putting it toward better use. We certainly seem to have gotten a lot better at using art for persuasive purposes over time, as in marketing and propaganda, which are much more effective than they ever used to be, honed to a real science now. Whether that's something we ought to be using it for is a separate question, but we sure have gotten better at using it for that.
I highly recommend the book from Jaques Maquuet: The Aesthetic Experience: An Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts. It explores these conflicts and questions.
Is there an objective meaning to a particular piece of art? Probably not. I used to be in the camp that said a piece of art needed to stand on its own merits as art with no interpretation by the artist required. Recently I've concluded that it's on a grey scale. A piece should be able to stand on its own as something that whether in a good or bad way, intentional or not, connects to the observer. Otherwise it's just clutter. While listening to a sculptor describe the the meaning behind one project it hit me that humans are story tellers, a defining characteristic of our species. As stand alone pieces his project was visibly interesting, but after he told the story behind this project and the purpose for the forms it really clicked in a deep way, and for me it went from being interesting to being truly amazing.
What about those aspects of modernism like cubism or stream of consciousness which are about the deconstruction of reality and the prevalence of a subjective vision? Are they strands of modernism that evolved into postmodernism?
He should lead with pomo philosophy of language, since I don't think postmodernism really has much to say about science. Now would it have something to say about scientific truth, it might but not much to say about science as a practice, or science itself.
Unfortunately for both science and postmodernism, postmodernism tries to say quite a lot about science - by basically deconstructing it. You can learn more on the ongoing discussion - but primarily history of science - in the brilliant book "Invention of Science" by David Wootton.
I would think that there are certainly objective standards that you can apply to art that can be used to judge some aspects of a work; basically determining the level of virtuosity it displays, although it should be somewhat apparent to the lay person. So not every way is a way to make high art; rather there are recognized categories of styles. I think there is a base category of general virtuosity. The idea of a sloppily or lazily created work would not make sense if there wasn't at least this base category, so I will say there is a right way to make high art; virtuously or skillfully. I would separate art and beauty. Beauty by itself is not art, such as landscapes that we might naturally find beautiful (probably a biological, evolutionary bias), because there is no artist involved. Art doesn't have to be beautiful; I see no reason why it should. On that, I will say that architecture should not be treated like art; it should try to be beautiful or generally agreeable; architects shouldn't think of themselves as artists. Whether something is art seems to be a matter of intent by the creator. I would say that something like Duchamp's "Fountain", which technically art by the signature alone, is not high art, as there is no virtuosity there. So I am rejecting what may be referred to as institutionalism; critics should be independent, dispassionate, and objective.
So one issue that most of the people lack any real understanding of materials you work with, which is more "virtuoso". In fact street painters often use these as a trick to sell a low effort product (for example). Different materials have different time investment and effort to learn to master. By the way what is art is culturally defined by a contemporary society. There had been cultures where there were no understanding of what is art, no such social category (aesthetics however existed in some sense or another). So I would not say architecture can't be an art or aesthetically pleasing.
@@katsumikiyota4658 Regarding art and architecture, I was merely making the point that art doesn't have to be pleasing; the artist could be trying to express other emotions (such as sadness or disgust), which I don't think would be appropriate for architecture. Art for art's sake, is definitely a luxury; that someone would have the time and resources to create a major work or could expect to gain enough from selling it. I suppose an affluent society could exist where there was no concept of having art independent of any practical use. What is art is culturally informed, but the creator has to call it art. Art requires intentionality. If the maker of the urinal had called it art, then what Duchamp did would be a derivative work. Something could be repurposed as art, by putting it on display, be it a rock or a urinal, but the artist would be the displayer. I wouldn't call either of those examples, high art. I agree that the lay person is not the best judge of effort or difficulty, which is a good reason to have expert evaluators.
@@DevinBigSeven So to present counter arguments: Architecture can absolutely serve other than trying to invoke pleasant emotions. Brutalism, even cathedral buildings are massive and often try to invoke a feeling of insignificance. Sadness and even disgust can be part of the aesthetic experience of architecture (so for example there are a place - I believe a monastery - in Czech Republic built the internal up from skulls and bones). on the necessity of having to get a ruling/elite class to have art. I don't think so at all. Aesthetic and artistic expression exist even in these places - it certainly existed in cave paintings. So Maquet argues in his book with the example of - I believe a West African cup - that while the carving we in our Western society recognise as aesthetic/artistic aim by the artist - that has religious significance: it protects from spirits and poisons. However the attempt to shape the cup perfect circle is an attempt in that society which is just for the aesthetic experience itself, no other significance attached to it. And on "high art"... I am not sure what you mean exactly. How you define high art? What is it exactly? If you refer something akin to Bourdieu's field theory, where he paints that social capital can be translated into different (economic or political capital), I agree. There is in our society such thing as high art. However what it is, what the content exactly is, is not something concrete. Tango, once had been the dance and music of the courtesans and prostitutes with gauchos (hence why women keep their head away - gauchos did smell after long herding of cattle) had been a low art/culture. It had been elevated however later as something of the elite of Argentina. Then you had reformers, like Astor Piazzolla, who had been blamed to bring down the high art of tango music, however today he is classic.
*The "Fountain" is a masterpiece because it explicitly challenged the entire notion of art with such cleverly low effort. Sure, it's easy to be lazy, but it's definitely easy to come up with that idea, very hard indeed, so hard humans waited thousands of years for it to appear and started an entirely new chapter of art. It might not be "high" art, but it's the most important piece in entire art history.
an intented-to-be-helpful tip: the person reading this is repeatedly letting his aspiration of air die out at the end of each sentence--contrasting with almost shouting the beginning of each sentence. if a modernist intention to communicate is the goal, this shout-to-whisper modulation make it very hard to Hear, therefore difficult to Follow/ Understand! I am very much enjoying the content.
I feel like cabcel culture is far right but now the left has also felt that they have the morale high grounds and adapted the rights tactics. Historically more women were on the right so now they have gone left and used that cancelling tactics.
That is generally true of all things on a critical rationalist epistemology. All we can ever know for sure is that *this* is *not* an acceptable option; which of the remaining options is *optimal* always remains an open question, because there is always a range of remaining options.
@@InventiveHarvest I didn't mean to imply that you said it was optimally bad. I'm extending your point to inquiry more broadly: we can say that such-and-such is objectively NOT the correct whatever (e.g. Highlander 2 is objectively bad), even though we can never say what IS the objectively correct whatever (e.g. we can't say that something is objectively good art), only that something is within the range of things not YET shown to be objectively incorrect (bad/false/whatever).
@@Pfhorrest oh, that's why i couldnt understand. I think this is the first time we have agreed here. Of course its hard to argue with the fact that Highlander 2 is objectively crap. Practically a tautology
(Food for thought) I'm a Muslim, the American Flag is deeply offensive to me and millions of people, it represents oppression and genocide to me. Please cancel and censor the American flag, and imprison everyone who is waving it. Why doesn't this opinion have any weight? Because I have no power, neither do the millions of people who are affected by the Americans and their Genocide in Vietnam and the Middle east. So either you allow every single Symbol and opinion which represents slavery, genocide, and war, or you declare the American flag a hate symbol. If you don't do that, my view is correct, that might makes right, and there is no justice. Whoever has the most power controls the narrative and there is absolutely no right or wrong in this world, only powerful and powerless.
There are no aesthetics. Everything can be quantified by energy cost and the greater cost is always immoral unless offset by reduced consumption elsewhere with respect to solar output per second. Biophysical Economics -Charles Hall
I love postmodern philosophy. It opens up so many paths of differentiation.
Same!
Its so rediculous to me how there are people today who want to make it out as some evil thing that strips meaning 😂
Its litterally about recognising that something can have more than one meaning!
In some sence its litterally about giving things more meaning, rather than less.
What it just isnt about tho, is about beeing naive.
People who go against it in a knee-jerk way, tend to either not understand the idea that its proponens are trying to share, or they are, wierdly, payed to do it, like in the case of jordan peterson and other far right wing pundants who naivelly hold the metanerrative of judeo-christian values ( which are only a recent theme, since islam is also a part of that tradition, as well as the fact that thease two cultured have been opposed to one another for a long time, which suggests to me the invention of an artificial conection rather than an acknowledgement of how they were already conected within their literary traditions, tho not in society)
Anyway, i brought up that tangent because of the fact that peterson was the one who mislead me to be against postmodernism several years ago when i was still idolising public figures- damn was that a psychologic nightmare.
The ideology that peterson sells, i can best describe as " when a crybully goes up to you, and tells you that he will protect you if you give him money, and then after you ask who the protection is from, they tell you, its from themselves 😂, and then after a whille you developing stokholm syndrome towards the bully, whare y you believe that he is actually doing things for yourown good"
Thats what peterson does.
He sends ya into nihilism, then closes the doors to get out ( i.e. post modernism) and then offers, not "God", but instead, the belief that we should live "as if god exists" as if god is an apriory assumption that comes about naturally from observation of the world.
So his goal here is to make you so confuzed about who and what you are and about how to observe the world, to pile on a fu*k ton of contridictions in your brain, and then to talk to you as if you are beeing skeptical when you follow him, and then tells you " pretend god exists cuz its the best we can do"
Like, the ideological nightmare he has trapped people in, and has likelly trapped himself in, is just beyond sad to me .
However be the case, there are ways out- genuinelly becoming skeptical is one of the best ways
Have a lovely day
So, my takes on the four pillars of modernist aesthetics, and you tell me whether this is a "modernist" or "postmodernist" take or (as I expect, and would like) something that transcends both of them:
1. It can be an objective fact that a piece of art is or isn't successful at doing whatever it is meant to do (see below for qualification there), and it can also be an objective "fact" (or the moral equivalent of a fact at least) that something or another ought to be done or not. Between these two things, it's possible to judge how objectively good a piece of art is: how successful it is at doing something that ought to be done. However, since art works are speech-acts, success as doing anything depends on the audience: a work of art could be objectively successful at doing something to one audience, but not be fit for doing that same thing to a different audience, and the success of the art depends then on what audience it's presented to, which is a part of the art itself (since to be art just is to be presented to an audience for the purposes of evoking some reaction).
2. Art, being a kind of speech-act, means different things in different senses of the word "means": in one sense, it means what the artist meant it to mean, because that's what that sense of "means" means, it refers to the intention behind it, the same way that when I say something I mean something by my words; but, in another sense, my words might mean to you something different than I meant for them to mean, and likewise art, being a kind of speech-act, can mean something different to an audience than the artist meant for it to mean. The artist means something *by* the art, and the art means something *to* the audience, and those things might not be the same thing -- in which case, the art is unsuccessful, and thus, "bad" in that sense, though an audience can make it harder for art to be "good" by being bad at understanding what artists mean. Miscommunication is a two-way street.
3. Art can be meant to represent reality, or it can not be meant for that. That's just one thing art can be used for, among many. If it is used for that, it can succeed or fail at that, to varying degrees. If it's not being used for that, the question of its success at that is irrelevant.
4. Given that art can be evaluated at all (see point 1), we can get better at it over time, both in the sense of being more successful at doing what we're trying to do with it, and in the sense of putting it toward better use. We certainly seem to have gotten a lot better at using art for persuasive purposes over time, as in marketing and propaganda, which are much more effective than they ever used to be, honed to a real science now. Whether that's something we ought to be using it for is a separate question, but we sure have gotten better at using it for that.
I highly recommend the book from Jaques Maquuet: The Aesthetic Experience: An Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts. It explores these conflicts and questions.
Is there an objective meaning to a particular piece of art? Probably not. I used to be in the camp that said a piece of art needed to stand on its own merits as art with no interpretation by the artist required. Recently I've concluded that it's on a grey scale. A piece should be able to stand on its own as something that whether in a good or bad way, intentional or not, connects to the observer. Otherwise it's just clutter. While listening to a sculptor describe the the meaning behind one project it hit me that humans are story tellers, a defining characteristic of our species. As stand alone pieces his project was visibly interesting, but after he told the story behind this project and the purpose for the forms it really clicked in a deep way, and for me it went from being interesting to being truly amazing.
What about those aspects of modernism like cubism or stream of consciousness which are about the deconstruction of reality and the prevalence of a subjective vision? Are they strands of modernism that evolved into postmodernism?
This comment is objectively good.
He should lead with pomo philosophy of language, since I don't think postmodernism really has much to say about science. Now would it have something to say about scientific truth, it might but not much to say about science as a practice, or science itself.
Unfortunately for both science and postmodernism, postmodernism tries to say quite a lot about science - by basically deconstructing it. You can learn more on the ongoing discussion - but primarily history of science - in the brilliant book "Invention of Science" by David Wootton.
I would think that there are certainly objective standards that you can apply to art that can be used to judge some aspects of a work; basically determining the level of virtuosity it displays, although it should be somewhat apparent to the lay person. So not every way is a way to make high art; rather there are recognized categories of styles. I think there is a base category of general virtuosity. The idea of a sloppily or lazily created work would not make sense if there wasn't at least this base category, so I will say there is a right way to make high art; virtuously or skillfully. I would separate art and beauty. Beauty by itself is not art, such as landscapes that we might naturally find beautiful (probably a biological, evolutionary bias), because there is no artist involved. Art doesn't have to be beautiful; I see no reason why it should. On that, I will say that architecture should not be treated like art; it should try to be beautiful or generally agreeable; architects shouldn't think of themselves as artists. Whether something is art seems to be a matter of intent by the creator. I would say that something like Duchamp's "Fountain", which technically art by the signature alone, is not high art, as there is no virtuosity there. So I am rejecting what may be referred to as institutionalism; critics should be independent, dispassionate, and objective.
So one issue that most of the people lack any real understanding of materials you work with, which is more "virtuoso". In fact street painters often use these as a trick to sell a low effort product (for example). Different materials have different time investment and effort to learn to master.
By the way what is art is culturally defined by a contemporary society. There had been cultures where there were no understanding of what is art, no such social category (aesthetics however existed in some sense or another). So I would not say architecture can't be an art or aesthetically pleasing.
@@katsumikiyota4658 Regarding art and architecture, I was merely making the point that art doesn't have to be pleasing; the artist could be trying to express other emotions (such as sadness or disgust), which I don't think would be appropriate for architecture. Art for art's sake, is definitely a luxury; that someone would have the time and resources to create a major work or could expect to gain enough from selling it. I suppose an affluent society could exist where there was no concept of having art independent of any practical use. What is art is culturally informed, but the creator has to call it art. Art requires intentionality. If the maker of the urinal had called it art, then what Duchamp did would be a derivative work. Something could be repurposed as art, by putting it on display, be it a rock or a urinal, but the artist would be the displayer. I wouldn't call either of those examples, high art. I agree that the lay person is not the best judge of effort or difficulty, which is a good reason to have expert evaluators.
@@DevinBigSeven So to present counter arguments:
Architecture can absolutely serve other than trying to invoke pleasant emotions. Brutalism, even cathedral buildings are massive and often try to invoke a feeling of insignificance. Sadness and even disgust can be part of the aesthetic experience of architecture (so for example there are a place - I believe a monastery - in Czech Republic built the internal up from skulls and bones).
on the necessity of having to get a ruling/elite class to have art. I don't think so at all. Aesthetic and artistic expression exist even in these places - it certainly existed in cave paintings. So Maquet argues in his book with the example of - I believe a West African cup - that while the carving we in our Western society recognise as aesthetic/artistic aim by the artist - that has religious significance: it protects from spirits and poisons. However the attempt to shape the cup perfect circle is an attempt in that society which is just for the aesthetic experience itself, no other significance attached to it.
And on "high art"... I am not sure what you mean exactly. How you define high art? What is it exactly? If you refer something akin to Bourdieu's field theory, where he paints that social capital can be translated into different (economic or political capital), I agree. There is in our society such thing as high art. However what it is, what the content exactly is, is not something concrete. Tango, once had been the dance and music of the courtesans and prostitutes with gauchos (hence why women keep their head away - gauchos did smell after long herding of cattle) had been a low art/culture. It had been elevated however later as something of the elite of Argentina. Then you had reformers, like Astor Piazzolla, who had been blamed to bring down the high art of tango music, however today he is classic.
*The "Fountain" is a masterpiece because it explicitly challenged the entire notion of art with such cleverly low effort. Sure, it's easy to be lazy, but it's definitely easy to come up with that idea, very hard indeed, so hard humans waited thousands of years for it to appear and started an entirely new chapter of art. It might not be "high" art, but it's the most important piece in entire art history.
an intented-to-be-helpful tip: the person reading this is repeatedly letting his aspiration of air die out at the end of each sentence--contrasting with almost shouting the beginning of each sentence. if a modernist intention to communicate is the goal, this shout-to-whisper modulation make it very hard to Hear, therefore difficult to Follow/ Understand! I am very much enjoying the content.
I knew someone who considered the swastika offensive no matter what. It has one relevant meaning.
I feel like cabcel culture is far right but now the left has also felt that they have the morale high grounds and adapted the rights tactics. Historically more women were on the right so now they have gone left and used that cancelling tactics.
While art cannot be objectively good, it can be objectively bad. i.e. Highlander 2
That is generally true of all things on a critical rationalist epistemology. All we can ever know for sure is that *this* is *not* an acceptable option; which of the remaining options is *optimal* always remains an open question, because there is always a range of remaining options.
@@Pfhorrest Highlander 2 is objectively bad, but I did not say that it was optimally bad. There is also Space Jam 2.
@@InventiveHarvest I didn't mean to imply that you said it was optimally bad. I'm extending your point to inquiry more broadly: we can say that such-and-such is objectively NOT the correct whatever (e.g. Highlander 2 is objectively bad), even though we can never say what IS the objectively correct whatever (e.g. we can't say that something is objectively good art), only that something is within the range of things not YET shown to be objectively incorrect (bad/false/whatever).
@@Pfhorrest oh, that's why i couldnt understand. I think this is the first time we have agreed here. Of course its hard to argue with the fact that Highlander 2 is objectively crap. Practically a tautology
(Food for thought)
I'm a Muslim, the American Flag is deeply offensive to me and millions of people, it represents oppression and genocide to me. Please cancel and censor the American flag, and imprison everyone who is waving it. Why doesn't this opinion have any weight? Because I have no power, neither do the millions of people who are affected by the Americans and their Genocide in Vietnam and the Middle east. So either you allow every single Symbol and opinion which represents slavery, genocide, and war, or you declare the American flag a hate symbol. If you don't do that, my view is correct, that might makes right, and there is no justice. Whoever has the most power controls the narrative and there is absolutely no right or wrong in this world, only powerful and powerless.
It's pretty clear that some things are objectively beautiful such as a sunset.
There are no aesthetics. Everything can be quantified by energy cost and the greater cost is always immoral unless offset by reduced consumption elsewhere with respect to solar output per second.
Biophysical Economics -Charles Hall