Art Comments.txt

What is the purpose of 'art history' and 'art appreciation'? From their titles, their purpose seems self explanatory, but to what might be called the 'uninitiated', why a given person should be especialy concerned with the history of art, or furthermore, why they would need specific lessons in theory in order to appreciate art 'better' isn't at all obvious. After all, one might ask, isn't it enough to simply LOOK at art and see what is there, taking in its beauty as you see fit? And many serious appreciators and advocates of the arts would very much agree with this, contending that this really is sufficiant and that any genuine art lover ought to have inside them exaclty what is needed to genuinely understand art in its highest and most valued form, without needed to be educated in this or that theory. Now, this general line of opinion may need some qualification, as many of these 'natural' art lovers may still have things to gain from having certain things pointed out to them. A given work may seem sterile to them until the aspects of it that have fascinated another person are explained and hence revealed to them, and it might be only then that its beauty finally blossems fourth upon noticing these features.

But even so, this doesn't necessarily fit in with what art courses, those involved in the viewing of it rather than the making, actually offer in practice to a significant amount of the public, many of which have little inherant 'fine feeling' for these arts and wouldn't understand why what people venerate as *masterpieces* are so much better regarded than a given poster they may have on their walls. Such people are typically *not* 'natural' art lovers, but may, for whatever reason (be it social prestige, having the subejct offered in their degree, fascination with what they perceive to have value beyond that which they currently comprehend etc.) wish to seek out such courses in order to hopefully become more erudite in the arts, even if it may be unclear what that might mean. In any case, such people percieve such education as something they ought to do, whatever particular values the specific education may actually want to impart on them.

But, I question, what exaclty are such people likely to get out of these courses? After all, if it is necessary to be educated in order to appreciate art, then who is to say that this education actually makes its students *better* at perceiving what is supposed to be actually valued? What if the education simply happens to direct people's attention to aspects of art that had simply become fashionable to be valued in specific circles, rather than what is enduring and had been valued in other times? How are the students to tell if this is the case, them being naturally ignorant as they are? And what if something of the *reverse* happens, and something is *truthfully* claimed to be enduring and traditionaly well regarded in the past, despite this not actually so being highly cherished by those natural art lovers that exist today who claim to be privy to the deeper nature of what is truly valuable about art?

Why should people care about art, or artifacts anyway? Why bother to have whole courses and publications concerned with the study of what may as well, to someone, be ancient decorations?


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Heidegger has made a particular comment on the relation of the experience of works of art and our ability to examine the brain undergoing such an experience with technology. Namely, that he fears the possibility of such a a thing and cautions against it. This is understandable to a certian extent, as there are certian kinds of people who take the results of brain scans, the varied data they produce and the analysis of possible patterns and correlaitons derived from it, as more than this, and assume that such things can, in themselves, 'explain' aesthetic experience in their own right. In the light of this, fears of such naivety are warrented, but that and that alone is the extent to which thsoe fears are valid. To denounce the whole project of looking into brain structures to understand how they might correlate with mind and mental process, simply because you deem certain acts that may be fundumentally tied to physical structure to be 'sacred' in some sense and fear the real knowledge that might be gained from this, is an admittence of philosophical cowardice of the highest order and should be recognized as such.