By specific forms I meant predetermined form, as in already developed. For example, does a person have a pre-existing preference for symmetry because the human body is symmetrical or because evolution prefers that as a signal of health? Some would say yes, but what, if anything in the way of scientific proof, assures their opinion? To say that some people have more discerning taste than others is to say that some cultural consensus exists defining what discerning taste consists of, what denotes it, etc. I agree and that is the heart of my position, that taste is adapted from social standards, traits, preferences, and the like which can change from time to time. There is nothing independent of social norms to use as a measure of discerning taste, at least in anyone being able to state them scientifically, so far. Maybe neurology and biochemistry and related fields will someday show that the human brain has evolved a "hard-wired" tendency to prefer certain patterns, forms, relationships that some would call discerning and of high aesthetic taste, I very much doubt that. There is no evidence for it. Instead, what we find are cultural practices that flower and decay, that change and contradict. There seems to be nothing the way of a common discerning taste among all people, ever. That leads me to doubt the evolutionary aesthetics argument.
It is not good enough in a serious argument to rely on what you noticed in other people's traits as proof of this or that proposition. You may be interpreting what they do or say in ways that don't correspond to them as much as to yourself. After all, when you say a person demonstrates discerning taste, you are first of all saying that you have equal of better discerning taste because you can judge it in others. WC ----- Original Message ---- From: Boris Shoshensky <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, December 20, 2010 8:22:06 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art I don't know what is specific form. I know that some people have more discerning taste then others. It is often shown and shared. Boris Shoshensky To: [email protected] Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:24:41 -0800 (PST) Sorry, I need to say that taste is not inborn in specific forms. At least no one has ever demonstrated that it is. Simply asserting that it is, is not sufficient. That lawyer may have seen other work, who knows how unrelated, perhaps a natural attraction to that art which is less structured, as an aesthetic escape from the structured logic of his profession. I agree, "go figure" and to me that means figuring it out, looking for reasons, going beyond the immediately obvious. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Boris Shoshensky <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, December 20, 2010 7:16:26 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art To deny influences from outside on our likes would be stupid. To deny born commonalities to dislike some and prefer some - the same. I have student, retired lawyer. Almost zero art history knowledge when started. When was exposed to Fauvists and Expressionists showed unusual admiration of the styles with enthusiasm of a child or expert. Go figure. Boris Shoshensky ---------- Original Message ---------- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:44:15 -0500 I don't think there is such a thing as an innocent eye. I can remember liking the Renoir of Suzanne VAladon in the kimono when I was four-I liked the dress and the girl and the red paint. And I didn't like my mother's pictures and I still don't like MAx Ernst. What did Boris like in the way of pictures in gneral when he was very young? KAte Sullivan -----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 6:48 pm Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art Artspeak. Conceptualism, art as anything, and the rise of art theory have ruined the word aesthetics. Lots of people now say philosophy of art instead of aesthetics but I think the next big word for both -- and all art discourse - will be Roy Harris' use of the term Artspeak. See his book, The Necessity of Artspeak. My saying that art is what's said about it is an attempt to provoke discussion of how words really constitute aesthetic experience, at least in focussing on "explanations" of that which is ineffable (in the Kantian sense). Boris, for instance, does not tolerate the notion that his "taste" or aesthetic response has a source outside of his choice of art or art that somehow attracted him out of the blue, as it were. But that subjectivity has a larger source and not only for Boris but for the artists he likes. He may say he was "an innocent eye" when he first responded to the work of Demuth, but maybe it was Demuth's work that was conforming to Boris's taste. In other words, Demuth "liked" Boris's aesthetic taste before Boris did. We've got to come to grips with the reality that our values and preferences, our experiences and feelings, and the ways we describe them or mentally process them, are largely, not totally, pre-shaped and evolving in our culture, in both our immediate culture and in a mega culture that includes historical heritage. It's not an attack on one's integrity or individualism to say that. In fact, it should be enlightening to recognize how we share our sensibilities with others past, present, and surely future too. If you like so and so's art, then so and so likes your liking. What is it you both share in the larger social context? WC ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, December 17, 2010 3:41:03 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art I think we all should know that according to the google Ngram viewer the use of the wros aesthetics dropped sharply between 1995 and now in printed sources. So they're callling it something else. What could that be? Kate Sullivan -----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 12:47 pm Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art OK. Boris does not want to examine the idea but to reject it on solipsistic grounds. Maybe it's because he resents any implication that free-individualism is shaped by cultural habits. I don't have a clue as to what the mumbo-jumbo regarding evolution means except everything changes. ----- Original Message ---- From: Boris Shoshensky <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, December 17, 2010 11:18:22 AM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art William's challenge on artists is incorrect, in my case. I did not have any info on John Marin or Demuth before I saw the work and instantly was intrigued by the talent. If I was only influenced by institutional or cultural
