No, I’m not suggesting you did. You just asked me to make a point about my statement that art may not be about emotions.

I personally think the subjectivity of art is to do with each persons emotional disposition. — I like sushi

Just to be sure, I do understand what you mean by this. And if the subjectivity is to do with emotions then I don’t think that’s enough to say whether a work is good or bad, in fact if anything it’s a very bad way to judge art. And maybe that’s the problem.

Okay, maybe I could explain what I meant better ...

I made a comment that I think the differences in opinion about some piece of artwork is possibly, in part, due to the persons character and emotional state. As an example someone may me a very rigid personality, austere and precise, and when “viewing” some artwork this personal sensibility plays off the art in either a positive or negative way (not necessarily as good or bad - as I stated). So at some juncture in a person’s life, after certain experiences, a piece of artwork that previously did nothing much for them - or maybe even repulsed them -comes to the fore as they’ve grown emotionally and/or have a more investigative interest in art in general.

So if someone says “that does nothing for me” it may be because they’re not ready to face that part of their emotional being (an inbuilt psychological defense) or that they simply don’t appreciate it aesthetcially due to lack of exposure to that particular “style”.

@ZhouBoTong

You wrote a bit too much to reply to it all, but on these central points.

1) Am I claiming that everyone who doesn't appreciate art is a moron?

No, I never said anything like that. There are different ways to be smart. Some very smart people probably don't appreciate art.

2) Is art just entertainment?

No, art is supposed to convey emotions and/or ideas of significant value. Entertainment need not do that. So, the two are different even though they may overlap in some instances. You can refuse to recognize the difference if you want but there's nothing particularly "elitist" in it—it's generally accepted even by those who are not into art.

One strong memory I have from school is one time in English when we "did" Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, and the teacher gave this long spiel about how it gives us a really good insight into the conditions of the poor in the era. We'd just come from our history class (doing the Reform Acts) where the teacher had spent the last half of the lesson warning us of the dangers of uncorroborated accounts. It really pissed me off and I made my opposition quite clear (I was duly detained at the headmaster's pleasure).

If you want to learn about the plight of the poor, study history. If you want to learn about emotions, study psychology. It bothers me that we put such a high bar to evidence in the respective scientific fields and yet can label, essentially what one film director 'rekons', as being a "fascinating insight into the struggles of inner-city life", or whatever.

I think art has has duty which it's current obsession with 'ideas' is neglecting. Art may reflect life, but life also reflects art in that it influences the way we think. So if art makes even a tiny error in its reflection, that error will be copied, magnified, copied again and so on.

I'm happy to enjoy a painting for the way it looks, or a story for the way it makes me feel, but the moment it starts making claims of "saying something about the humans condition", I'll pick up my psychology textbook instead. I prefer my received opinions to have at least made the effort to be useful.

I think art has has duty which it's current obsession with 'ideas' is neglecting. — Isaac

Why should art have a duty?

One strong memory I have from school is one time in English when we "did" Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, and the teacher gave this long spiel about how it gives us a really good insight into the conditions of the poor in the era. We'd just come from our history class (doing the Reform Acts) where the teacher had spent the last half of the lesson warning us of the dangers of uncorroborated accounts. — Isaac

Why do you regard Dickens account as uncorrobated? He was there and wrote about what he saw.

Why should art have a duty? — Brett

I didn't say it should, I said I think it has. A different proposition. The reason I think it has is in the post. It has the potential to cause social change and social change (the direction of it) is important to me. I think any position of power carries the responsibility to use that power with consideration for the effects. I believe "Spiderman" made a similar point, but as that was 'low brow' entertainment, I expect it's just nonsense.

Why do you regard Dickens account as uncorrobated? He was there and wrote about what he saw. — Brett

If anyone has corroborated Dickens' account by comparing it to others, adjusting for bias, checking material facts etc., then it is that work of corroboration that anyone seriously interested in the conditions of the poor in the era should be reading. Not a single biased source. Its pretty basic level stuff.

It has the potential to cause social change and social change (the direction of it) is important to me. — Isaac

I think you’re probably talking about a kind of censorship here, that because of its potential art has a responsibility. But who decides what these responsibilities serve and what social change should be addressed? In the USSR artwork that didn’t serve Communist ideology was regarded as ‘decadent’ and crushed. Any art produced under these conditions is no longer art.

You need to do some reading on Charles Dickens.

I didn't say it should, I said I think it has. A different proposition. — Isaac

The Artful Dodger.

I think you’re probably talking about a kind of censorship here — Brett

I never mentioned that anything should be done about it, let alone government intervention. I'm appealing to makers and consumers of art, not demanding that the government step in and make what I reckon into law, I really don't where you might have got that impression from.

who decides what these responsibilities serve and what social change should be addressed? — Brett

The artists and the people consuming the art.

You need to do some reading on Charles Dickens. — Brett

I think what you're suggesting here is some kind of 1984-like social conformity. Governments demanding that we read certain texts before we can even speak publicly... Oh, wait, that was just your opinion. (you see what I did there).

Just wondering if you might agree that Dickens did actually carry out his ‘duty’ with his books.

who decides what these responsibilities serve and what social change should be addressed?
— Brett

The artists and the people consuming the art. — Isaac

I think art has has duty which it's current obsession with 'ideas' is neglecting. Art may reflect life, but life also reflects art in that it influences the way we think. So if art makes even a tiny error in its reflection, that error will be copied, magnified, copied again and so on. — Isaac

How do the artists decide what to produce without creating that error? How do they know what it is?

How do the artists decide what to produce without creating that error? How do they know what it is? — Brett

Personally... By erring on the side of caution. Something I think storytellers and artists intuitively got for the vast majority of human history. As I say, it only seems to me to be the last hundred years or so since art has had this obsession with reality. From Homer to Beowulf to Arthurian legend, the heroes are always better than any real person could ever be, the villains are always the epitome of evil, the trials always beyond any normal person. Basically they err on the side of caution with their presentation. No one's ever going to be as heroic as Hercules, no trial is ever going to be as insurmountable as Grendal, no villain ever as traitorous as Mordred.

These stories didn't attempt to portray reality, they didn't try to "say something" about the times. Their job was to inspire people to be something the authors thought was worthy of aspiring to. And they shot way over the mark. That way, when life reflects art, you get what the authors thought was a better society.

Just wondering if you might agree that Dickens did actually carry out his ‘duty’ with his books. — Brett

From what little I know of Dickens, I think he probably did, in that if he had a bias it was toward showing how bad things were, but if I were writing it Bill Sikes would have been killed by Nancy.

Their job was to inspire people to be something the authors thought was worthy of aspiring to. — Isaac

Well that’s quite interesting because it resembles a little what I wrote in a post on ‘Art and Morality’. So I’m inclined to agree with you there.

Well that’s quite interesting because it resembles a little what I wrote in a post on ‘Art and Morality’. — Brett

I shall have a read of that then.

@Isaac
Let's not criticize art for not being what it's not supposed to be. Fiction is called fiction to distinguish it from fact. Novels ought to be read with that in mind, and Dickens is not responsible for anyone making historical claims of accuracy re his works. So, yes, if you want unbiased, factually accurate and corroborated representations of reality, go for a history book by a reputable scholar and not Oliver Twist, that's obvious. But that doesn't imply that you can't learn something from Oliver Twist or any other novel. You just need to judge it by different standards.

But that doesn't imply that you can't learn something from Oliver Twist or any other novel. You just need to judge it by different standards. — Baden

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here, maybe the "different standards" bit is confusing me. When I use 'learn' I generally mean the acquisition of facts, data or something like that. Facts and data are the sorts of that really seem best handled by the experts in their respective fields, no?

So if we shouldn't look to Dickens to learn facts about history (but rather turn to historians for those), then I'd have thought we should equally not look to Dickens to learn fact about social interaction (but rather turn to sociologists), nor human nature (but rather turn to psychologists), nor the way people used to relate (but rather turn to anthropologists).

Mybe my fusty academic outlook, but I'm not seeing what there is left to 'learn' from, say Richard III, that a good psychology textbook and a History of England can't tell you better.

When I use 'learn' I generally mean the acquisition of facts, data or something like that. — Isaac

That's a rather narrow perspective on learning though. It's not primarily how you learned your language or how to ride a bike or about the foibles and idiosyncrasies of your family and friends etc. So, I agree it's difficult to quantify what you can learn from a novel or a work of art, but there are different types of knowledge that are more or less easy to make explicit and that ease does not necessarily define their worth. So, if statistics and data are the types of learning you value then yes, why wade through a novel when you can Google these facts or use Wikipedia or a textbook etc? But human nature is something you've been learning through observation since early childhood and good novels can provide virtual scenarios that are realistic and engaging enough to allow you to learn about social interaction and human psychology in a similar way to how you "naturally" learn it in everyday life—without having to be explicitly aware of exactly what you learned. In other words, you might not be able to put the new knowledge into words, but your character alters in such a way that you behave differently. And the behavioural change is the test of useful knowledge having been acquired.

Mybe my fusty academic outlook, but I'm not seeing what there is left to 'learn' from, say Richard III, that a good psychology textbook and a History of England can't tell you better. — Isaac

Here is maybe where it comes down to taste. There are people who are not very academic who would prefer to learn about history or psychology through a play rather than a textbook. And what they lose in accuracy they may make up for in depth. Again, it's fine to have a bunch of accurate statistics running about in your head, but without the question, what are they for? being answered, there is no way to measure whether that knowledge is of greater worth than whatever less explicit knowledge is gleaned through an alternative source, which may have a more direct (and positive) use/effect.

And these kinds of learning don't have to be in competition. The philosopher John Searle probably has more explicit knowledge filling up his head than the vast majority of us, but he says he learned most of what he knows about human nature from Dostoevsky. Go figure...

Why are we teaching opinions in school? — ZhouBoTong

There are a lot of value objectivists around, even in academia.

Some of it might be due to people mistaking strongly stated opinions, where the bearer realizes that it's just an opinion, as objective claims, but definitely there are some value objectivists in academia.

So, I agree it's difficult to quantify what you can learn from a novel or a work of art, but there are different types of knowledge that are more or less easy to make explicit and that ease does not necessarily define their worth. — Baden

I thought that's what you probably had in mind, and I have no problem calling those thing 'learning' but...

I'm not sure I'm so content with what seems a little slight of hand with defining these nebulous learning experiences as coming from art, on the one hand, and then on the other claiming that an art form's ability to provide these previously hazy experiences can be clearly seen, measured and compared.

So it's not so much that Hamlet can't provide any learning, it's that, if it does, such learning is difficult to measure, may well be subjectively better for some people than others and is of an indefinable sort. How then can one be so sure that Hamlet is definitely better at this sybilline task than any other story?

And that claim, or at least the claim that his movies are garbage, can be rationally argued on the basis of a number of criteria including characterization, plot, use of language, imagery, quality of acting, etc. etc. In other words, we're talking of opinions, but not just opinions. Some opinions matter more than others because they're supported better. — Baden

How would you rationally support an opinion that x characteriation is better than y characterization, a plot elements are better than b plot elements, etc.?

Just as with ethics, it's all going to simply come down to preferences that some individual(s) has.

It seems a given in educated circles that Shakespeare and DaVinci created "better" art than, lets say, Michael Bay (makes movies that many would consider "low brow" like Transformers or Armageddon). Is there even a little justification for this?

However, once convinced of their superiority, the elites are happy to force their tastes on the rest of us (I never learned anything about Michael Bay movies in school) and they even have the audacity to suggest I am wrong when I say "I like x better than y". Why are we teaching opinions in school? I appreciate the discussion of opinion in school but there should only be judgement of the justification, not the opinion itself. — ZhouBoTong

I see things a bit differently. Do you like music? Have you ever listened to a really knowledgeable, widely experienced disk jockey who could lead you through a type of music he really cares and knows about? Playing examples, describing histories, comparing musical approaches. Explaining his preferences. An educated taste is a wonderful thing, it can lead you somewhere you've never been before. It can help you understand why people are moved by works of music. It can open up a whole new world of experiences. I've found that, even if I don't particularly like a type of music, jazz for example, listening to a knowledgeable jazz DJ is really eye opening and satisfying.

I remember when I lived in Cambridge Massachusetts in the 1970s. It was a great place to be in your 20s. Lots of cheap, good ethnic restaurants. Indian, Thai, Burmese, Italian, Chinese, Ethiopian. One of the local papers had a wonderful restaurant critic. He would go to restaurants and describe the
food and the experiences. The point of his reviews wasn't thumbs up or thumbs down, although he did make judgments. He had an educated taste that he loved to share with other people. He knew about the cuisines, how they differed and how they were similar. Their histories and how they developed. How Thai restaurants in the US were different from those in Thailand. He wasn't trying to force anyone to agree with him, he was offering us a chance to see food through his eyes. He wanted us to love it as much as he did.

I have always felt grateful to people like this, disk jockeys, art critics, teachers, friends, sports announcers. Knowledgeable people with passionate tastes who want to share them with others out of a love for food, visual art, architecture, writing, music, and on and on.

Maybe the way it's presented is heavy handed and arrogant. Maybe it comes off as more a punishment than an offer to share experiences, but the impetus behind the transmission of the canon, if you will, is to share things that have moved millions of people for thousands of years. To provide a common set of experiences and values.

Definitely valuable in my opinion to spend time with someone who knows some artform inside and out. They can help you understand it better, help you tune in to its nuances, etc.

We just have to be careful to not veer towards thinking that their aesthetic assessments--re what's good, bad, better, worse, etc.--are anything like facts, or that they can be correct or incorrect.

And we can gain just as much spending time with someone who knows Michael Bay-type films inside and out, or commercial pop music a la Britney Spears, Kesha, Pitbull, etc. Those folks can also help you understand that stuff better, help you tune in to its nuances, etc.

We just have to be careful to not veer towards thinking that their aesthetic assessments--re what's good, bad, better, worse, etc.--are anything like facts, or that they can be correct or incorrect.

And we can gain just as much spending time with someone who knows Michael Bay-type films inside and out, or commercial pop music a la Britney Spears, Kesha, Pitbull, etc. Those folks can also help you understand that stuff better, help you tune in to its nuances, etc. — Terrapin Station

The world is full of wonderful things. You will never have time to know, understand, experience, be moved by all those things. There is no need for all of us to agree on what we like or don't like. That's not the same as saying it's all just a matter of taste. Some things have more significance - historical, spiritual, artistic, moral, political, intellectual - than other things. It is appropriate to put special emphasis on the most significant aspects of our society and culture, those aspects that have influenced and moved people greatly and for a long time.

It seems a given in educated circles that Shakespeare and DaVinci created "better" art than, lets say, Michael Bay (makes movies that many would consider "low brow" like Transformers or Armageddon). Is there even a little justification for this? — ZhouBoTong

There's a LOT actually. Depth of thought, values, artistic ability, complexity, etc.

(I never learned anything about Michael Bay movies in school) — ZhouBoTong

That's because it wouldn't teach you anything of value.

they even have the audacity to suggest I am wrong when I say "I like x better than y". Why are we teaching opinions in school? — ZhouBoTong

Maybe your teachers worded this poorly, but absolutely no one is telling you what to like. You can like all the garbage reality TV you want, and there's little room for argument (one might be able to make a case that it rots your brain and imparts poor morals, I suppose). But some art is better than other art because it better fulfills what we want art to do. See above: deeper. more complex, more rich artistically.

I do feel comfortable enough in my knowledge of education or the arts to justify any insults - for example: Shakespeare is OK at best (brilliant use of language but garbage stories). — ZhouBoTong

I think you ought to feel a lot less comfortable if that's something you're going to say. Shakespeare uses archetypal stories and overlays them with rich worlds of emotion and philosophy. Michael Bay and all the others borrow from these basic plots and fail catastrophically to create anything of great value.

That being said, I think Michael Bay does make good movies for what he sets out to do. He's not trying to create anything at a Shakespearean level. He's merely trying to entertain. I, and most Americans are entertained. Mission accomplished. I doubt even he would argue that his stuff is better than Hamlet, though.

A while ago on a recent post unrelated to this I used an analogy to help me explain my point. The immediate response was criticism for using something that did not add clarity. Analogies are obviously cultural so I take their point. But the difference in use of language was very clear. I don’t think the poster failed to understand the anaology, they just didn’t accept its use in a discussion. For me it presented a situation in one short sentence. If you think like that then you’re not likely to view art as being very valuable in talking about human nature, which is largely what art is about.

Some people just don’t ‘see’ art.
Some people aren’t very tuned in to what’s going on around them.
Some people don’t respond to abstract idea.
Some people never use metaphors or similes.
Some people have no idea of why they do things or think things.

These people are never going to ‘get’ art. They don’t understand what others are talking about. But asked for their opinion on art and they will give you one. Most likely it will lean towards pedantic realism. These same people exist in elitist circles as well. When asked about art they’ll also have an opinion, the received opinions of the group they embed themselves in.

People who respond to art on a genuine level, that is they enjoy life through the prisms of life mentioned above, to mention only a few, recognise immediately those who cannot respond to life this way. If you are one of those people then it’s most likely you’ll regard those art lovers as elitists. It’s an open door you can never go through. So instead they try to deny that such a thing as good art exists, that no one can define good art, that it’s elitist and fatuous. Like I said, the artist doesn’t care.

We can not (should not) say Shakespeare's work is sophisticated and Jerry Seinfeld's is not. — ZhouBoTong

On a personal level, I think we all have our preferences. Maybe we identify with sophistication or authenticity or some other concept. We'll probably praise the art we like with terms that we'd like applied to us and our kind of people. Am I eager to be understood as serious and intellectual? Or am I charmingly unpretentious? We can mildly signal group membership with the right references. I can mention Last Week Tonight or James Joyce or Harry Potter or Lil' Wayne. Our personal brand is largely a curated blend of references. I'm not complaining, because I think it's an effective and efficient system. If I know your 5 favorite writers or musical artists, that may be more than enough information --though these days I'm more likely to be interested in business relationships and therefore in skills and conscientiousness.