This is an old revision of the document!
====== Aesthetic Judgement ====== ---- ===== Different Art Forms ===== ===== Content and Form: Representational and Abstract Art ===== ===== Genres and Styles ===== ===== High Art and Low Art? ===== ===== What do We Base Aesthetic Judgements on? ===== it may help to think of art as a form of communication that we can compare with language: <code> sound, text language: speaker/writer =======================> listener/reader language object, event (= it) art: artist (= he/she) =======================> audience, spectators, ... (= me) genre, style + critics (= they) </code> note: a critic is a specialist who helps us understand a (purported) work of art better, and thereby enables us to evaluate it -- so I read critics even after I have attended a concert or finished a novel;\\ a good piece of criticism, including a good literature lesson in school, should enable me to understand, appreciate and hopefully enjoy a work more. so when judging a (purported) work of art we can use * __he/she:__ the artist's intention, ("If I say I have made a work of art, you must accept it as a work of art.") his/her background, period, biography; * __me:__ the spectator's or audience's feelings and emotions ("I know what I like!" or: "Everyone likes it, so it is a great song.") * __it:__ properties of the work itself, formal aspects like balance, use of colour, intensity, ORIGINALITY; * __they:__ the general consensus, especially of informed specialists who have studied the art form, ("It must be a great work because I saw it in the museum.") for each of these ways, there have been people arguing that it is the only correct one, but in practice we use all of these.
