Anyone may judge anything with or without reasons agreeable to others. What makes art different from anything at all? Nothing except judgment. Judgment is a matter contextualizing something by a set of standards, a general discourse, customs, beliefs, reasoned and/or spontaneous feelings, and the like.
If you have a judgment it's natural to compare and contrast it with the judgments of others. We are, after all, social beings and our behaviors and feelings are integrated with culture even if we don't fully realize it. If you wish you can pass on your judgment to others on the perfectly sensible grounds that they can make a better -- more informed/sensitive judgment. So, you go to the doctor. But even then you made the judgment that you are ill or are likely to be ill. You want denial or verification of your judgment and a plan for restored health. The analogy between illness and art is not a good one. Misdiagnosed illness can be fatal; judgments on art are neither right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or fatal. It is sensible for anyone who lacks good familiarity with art to turn to those who have steeped themselves in art and art judgments (art history, theory) for refined judgment. But it's not necessary. Obviously, much art eschews theory, refined "art" knowledge, and is aimed at the ordinary person or even the really uninformed. Some art is very elitist in being "difficult" a code word designating art that assumes a special discursive context. The ordinary person, uninformed or conditioned by populist tastes, often has wonderful judgments on art that are not sustained by deeper analysis or illuminated by metaphor and reference to other art or cultural issues. I agree with E. Gombrich when he wrote "There is no wrong reason to like an artwork". There may be many unnoticed good reasons. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Rupert Dasilva <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, October 4, 2010 6:15:12 PM Subject: Re: "Is the public qualified to judge the merits of art?" To draw an analogy that may or may not be pertinent, consider first the question of who we think is qualified to make a judgement on the state of our health? Clearly the answer is not just any old member of the general public, we should want the judgement of a doctor. If judgement of merit in the arts is analogous to judgement in other fields, then the importance placed on the original question seems strange, for the answer would obviously be 'no'. It is easy to mistake the above question with a different one 'could the public be qualified to judge the merits of art?', to this, I feel, the obvious answer is yes. Questions arise. What makes one qualified to judge the merits of art? How can one become so qualified? and so on... R On 5 October 2010 00:00, William Conger <[email protected]> wrote: > YES. But that does not mean any judgment is going to stick. Judgment is a > subjective valuing and the way it is articulated may actually become part > of the > artwork's larger context. Thus when we "see" the artwork we also recreate > the > judgments we know about and then fashion our own in that larger context. > In > this way everyone who looks at a well-known artwork is refashioning all > that he > or she knows about it. > > I'm not going to bother reading the article because I know it's about the > populist choice of the contest in Michigan, the one with the big money > prize. > My thought about that is that the artworks are/were made to illustrate a > populist taste and the one that captures the widest taste of the populist > voters > wins. That means it will be the work that is most generalized as > exemplifying > to most commonplace aesthetic values. As Melamid and Komar discovered > years ago > in their professionally run poll, the most loved artwork is realistic, > blueish > water/landscape, has some historical people, a tame animal or two, and at > least > one child. The winning work, I predict, will come close to matching that > template. > > Making real art is like the Odyssey, where Odysseus must survive many > trials > (making art) with the help of the gods before he can return home to destroy > his > lazy stealing enemies and recover his family and honors. It's not for > intellectual weaklings who merely serve up a populist stew of other > artists' > ideas. > WC > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: joseph berg <[email protected]> > To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> > Sent: Mon, October 4, 2010 5:40:35 PM > Subject: "Is the public qualified to judge the merits of art?" > > >http://www.mlive.com/artprize/index.ssf/2010/09/where_does_the_artprize_conversation_stand_after_the_first_week_1.html >l
