Music and art week 3

Music and ArtMarilou Polymeropoulou

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http://musicandartoxford.wordpress.com/

Department for Continuing Education

Week 3 - The work of art pt. 2

Saturday, 4 February 2012

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



Previously

• Definitions of art and music

• Aesthetic theories

• Expression, beautiful, good, evaluation in music


This week

• Articles’ key points

• Visual and hybrid forms of art

• Examples


1. Sheldon Nahmod “Artistic Expression and Aesthetic Theory”

• Purpose of article: artistic expression in jurisdiction. 1) Control of art, 2) concept of beauty, 3) concept of sublime

• Plato and ideal society: 1) Control artistic expression 2) Mathematically beautiful

• From Plato to Kant: attempts to reconcile Greek Philosophy with Christianity: 1) Geometric beauty 2) knowledge and power ascending from individuals not God (Cartesian theory) 3) empiricism and subjectivity: psychological processes of art (sensation & reflection)

• Kant: centring on the human mind 1) feeling comprehends art, 2) aesthetic judgement separated/disinterested from/in knowledge and desire, 3) aesthetic judgements refer only to the feelings of their subjects (subjective universality), 4) art and beautiful cannot express ideas (as art is removed from knowledge and desire) -- opposing to Plato’s perspective

• Hegel: theory towards humanism.1) spirit developing into self-consciousness (Absolute Spirit), 2) art reveals truth through the material world

• Marx: dialectical materialism. 1) economic relationships determine everything (incl. art & culture), 2) art must represent a socialist reality, promote its ideas & behaviour -- similar to Plato’s perspective

• Sublime: 1) historically, 2) definition in Burke and Kant, 3) Sublime and infinity


Examples of the sublime


• Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 In C Minor, Op. 67, "Fate": I. Allegro Con Brio


2. Iris Murdoch “The sublime and the good”

• Against elitism in art

• Aims to define art

• (Biased) assumption: Shakespeare is the greatest of all artists. then forms aesthetic supporting this judgement philosophically

• Morality and art (eg should art express society?)

• Plurality of definitions of art: according to values, taste, morality, expressions etc


• Begins with Kant’s definition of art (beautiful and sublime)

• Free beauty: true judgement, common sense (universality)

• Dependent beauty: concept of perfection

• Sublime and emotion

• Beautiful is an analogy to good (symbolises) but shouldn’t be tainted with it



• 1) Kant: pure/true art is a small area of what we think of as art. Criticism on concept/set of rules applied in order to achieve beauty (e.g. wordless music).--liberal view

• 2) Tolstoy: good art - simple, understood by all (the Iliad, Old Testament, folk tales, V. Hugo), bad art - obscure, impressionism, Mallarme, Baudelaire, Beethoven. Criticism on simplicity as a characteristic of art.

Criticism



Is it bad art?De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sirène,

Qu'importe, si tu rends, — fée aux yeux de velours,Rythme, parfum, lueur, ô mon unique reine! —

L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?

From God or Satan, who cares? Angel or Siren, Who cares, if you make, — fay with the velvet eyes, Rhythm, perfume, glimmer; my one and only queen!

The world less hideous, the minutes less leaden?

Baudelaire, Hymne à la Beauté, Fleurs du Mal, 1861

William Aggeler’s translation, 1954Saturday, 4 February 2012

criticism (cont.)

• Reason within sociohistorical context (Hegel). Example of Sophocle’s tragedy Antigone (442 BC)

• Antigone plot and issue for Murdoch: Conflict between incompatible goods: 1) treason (human law), 2) Gods’ honour and brotherly love (divine, moral laws)

• Catharsis: combination of Kantian and Hegelian elements



Love and Freedom

• The essence of art and morals

• Discovery of reality: art, morals, love

• Praising individualism -- Ontological perspective (hence tragedy is the highest art)

• Freedom: aesthetic theory incorporating ontological theory, existentialism, historical context, social understanding of otherness



ExamplesDelacroix, Liberty leading the people (1830)

Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831)


Hybrid forms of art

• J. Levinson (1984) “Hybrid art forms”

• Definition: hybrid art forms are art forms arising from the actual combination or interpenetration of earlier art forms.

• True hybrids (primarily thought as such) and Gedanken hybrids (reconsidering works of art as hybrids)

• Combination of media (as art forms, eg. dance and music, theatre and dance)


Varieties of combination

• Juxtaposition (addition) - mixed media phenomena. Two or more arts are joined together and presented as a larger and more complex unit (e.g. accompaniment, audiovisual shows, installations)

• Synthesis (fusion) - two or more arts are brought together in a way that they lose part of their original identities (e.g. Wagner’s Operas as a synthesis of song and drama, Schwitters’ collages)

• transformation (alteration) - similar to juxtaposition but the arts combined do not equally contribute to the result (e.g. kinetic sculpture)


Music installation (juxtaposition). Sound and Light show, Horus Temple, Edfu, Egypt


Collage (synthesis). Kurt Schwitters Das Undbild, 1919


Kinetic sculpture (transformation). Theo Jansen, Beach Animal (2010)


Observations• Hybrid art forms tend to be examples of creativity

• Interaction is a central point

• Tracing common features/comparing arts used for the hybrid form

• Integrative effects: rich and complex. Cognitive overload for one purpose. (Wagnerian opera, with its ideal of a complete, all-encompassing experience, achieved through an intimate union of symphony, song, drama, and stagecraft )

• Disintegrative effects: symbolic or allusive of the psychological fragmentation, informational bombardment, and pervasive anomie of contemporary urban life. (Wilson/Glass Einstein on the Beach)


Philip Glass/Robert Wilson, 1976.Einstein on the Beach. “I feel the Earth Move”


Music and art week 3

Education

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