[email protected] wrote: > In a message dated 2/26/10 2:11:47 PM, [email protected] writes: > > I think we would do well to limit the question to what we feel when >> contemplating works-made by human beings,objects or series of actions >> designed >> to be repeated ,not sports feats or natural phenomena or other living >> beings. >> Kate Sullivan >> > Why impose this limitation? I want to understand the "nature" of an "a.e.". > This is a big 'IF", but it may be true: If the experience we sometimes > get in "real life" from observing a still-life, or an action be it simply > graceful, "lovely", or "dramatic", is undistinguisable from an a.e. from a > "work > of art", my guess is that will help us to see the underlying causes of the > feeling we call an "a.e.". > > "Art criticism" has for a very long time now been devoted to "explaining" > "art", which, claim I, means it seeks to explain why some WoA's result in > a.e.'s and others don't. I say the following without having thought it all the > way through: Art criticism can sometimes persuasively convey why a WoA does > NOT work, but it never tells us why it DOES work (despite veiled tautologies > like "It positively stimulates our emotions/neurons/DNA/etc").
I agree with Cheerskep. When you limit the question to what one feels whens contemplating human artifacts, you very quickly get to the question of whether the feeling is specific and unique to that work or to that category of works. And you also get to the related question of the border disciplines of jewelry making, furniture making, architecture itself, etc., and to how the feelings they evoke are or are not like the feelings evoked by a Titian or Archikpenko. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
