Mando -- Don't worry about my following academic ramble. If your criteria confidently guide you in your art, you keep at it. My comments (and William's which on the whole I agree with) are messages from nerdland.
Your remarks here consistently use terms that you believe convey what you have in mind. But I'd claim they don't, in this sense: When you write 'expression', 'form', 'essence', and even 'stand for' and 'abstract', I realize I can't be replicating in my mind what you have in yours. For example, it's exactly the notion behind the word 'essence' that 's under attack here, but you use the term in an unquestioned way that suggests you believe we'll all conjure the same idea as you do when we hear "essence". William and I are saying that though the word occasions a tumble of thoughts in the head there is in fact, in the "real world", no entity that "corresponds to" the term 'essence'. It's rather like the term 'soul'. I myself believe the alleged entity "soul" is imaginary. We may claim we have an "idea of it", but I'm convinced that's all it is -- an idea, a mental entity of kinds, with no more non-mental existence than unicorns. Please don't say, "Oh, everyone knows what 'expression' and 'form' MEAN." I claim words don't "mean". When I hear "apelsin", or "milk", or "democracy", or "Cleopatra", what comes into my head are solely bits of memory retrieved and mosaicked by my racy brain as it processes the familiar sounds. If you say "Milk!" every time you put a glass of the white stuff in front a child, she'll associate the word-sound with the white stuff, and recall the white stuff the next she hears "milk". That's not because 'milk' "has a meaning". It's simply because we have memories associated with the word-sound. Take the word 'expresses'. When we hear or read it, what comes to mind are scraps of memory of prior occasions when we've heard it, and the brain goes to work arranging an interpretation, a would be replica of what the speaker has in mind. We've heard it used about a man's action -- "He expressed his boredom with a yawn." "He expressed his reasons in a long speech." We've heard it used about an alleged action by a word or painting, even by a physical scene: "Nothing expresses the power of the tornado better than the scene of desolation at Joplin." The point: There is no THE meaning of anything in itself. Not even of 'essence'. When we ask about the "the meaning of the writer", we're usually asking about the notion in his mind, and we're seeking to replicate that notion in our own mind. On Aug 16, 2012, at 11:40 PM, ARMANDO BAEZA wrote: > I'm referring to say, thirty different abstract expressions of the human > form, > all, not so abstract that they can suggest something else,or even if > some do > stand for some thing else. > Is that not the essence of the human in > a different form? > > AB > > > ________________________________ > From: William Conger > <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Thursday, > August 16, 2012 5:06 PM > Subject: Re: Can art continue to exist without an > aesthetic criteria? > > Essence: It's not there. You can't put a ribbon around > it. You can't send it > to your friend. > > You can't say it's shared by all > humans because you can't test all humans for > it...or any human for that > matter. > > But...you can name anything at all as the essence of something. It's > a value > judgment, except in the few cases where the word serves as a > scientific term > denoting a particular, measurable substance of condition of a > substance. > wc
