RE: 'Derek chooses a crummy, impoverished, caricatural description of beauty to impugn ALL descriptions of beauty and makes no effort to enlist quality as a judmental standard.'
Once again, I do not impugn all descriptions of beauty. But, as I said, I think the best descriptions of it for visual art purposes can be provided via representative *works* from the period in which beauty (plus certain related qualities) held sway and was a genuine value. Raphael, Veronese and so on. Not pre-Renaissance and not post Manet, and not in any culture apart from our own. This ' crummy, impoverished, caricatural description' by the way comes from a published author on aesthetics (in the US).. Needless to say he is not on my bookshelves. DA . On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 3:15 AM, William Conger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There's heaps more of mediocrity in everything. I > said somewhere, despite increasing dizziness due to > Derek's continual running around the subject , that > the quality of what is said is (remains ) important. > What people say about concepts that can be described > but not defined, can be judged. Derek found a > particularly icky statement describing beauty to make > his point. Why is that different --less worthless-- > from my showing an especially ridiculus, crude, vague > caricature of George Washington claiming it to be a > good portrait (nuanced, insightful, ambiguous) of the > man? After all, any "good" Washington portrait is > also only a descriptive metaphor, never a definition, > and thus is different only in quality from the > caricature. The qualitative difference would lie in > the descriptive "abundance" (per Frances) of either > the caricature or the portrait. Derek chooses a > crummy, impoverished, caricatural description of > beauty to impugn ALL descriptions of beauty and makes > no effort to enlist quality as a judmental standard. > > Do we need to be shown a ludicrous example of > description to affirm that most writing on beauty is > probably qualitatively worthless? Most writing on > anything is qualitatively worthless. Most artworks > are qualitatively worthless. Should we therefore give > up on writing and artworks? Or should we admit we > can't define art and beauty and realize instead that > we can describe the concepts metaphorically and aim > for quality in doing so. I think quality needs to be > judged by ends and not means or purposes. What is the > end of quality? I'll say beauty. > > Derek may find another and another and another silly > description of beauty, ad infinitum, in a vain effort > to underscore the futility of confusing description > with definition -- the former qualitatively possible > and never universal, the latter always impossible. > I'd advise Derek to clean out the woo-woo authors from > his bookcase and obtain better, more informative > books... unless he was quoting Maritain or Aquainas > out of context just to say "gotcha". I'd expect that > because Derek likes that sort of thing. Somewere I > saw the line "The narcissism of minute differences" > and that is exactly what our list thrives on, > unhappily. > WC > > -- Derek Allan http://www.home.netspeed.com.au/derek.allan/default.htm
