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portrait fantasy portrait neo-surrealismprint. Analysis there is nothing to be said words are labels that we attach to things but the attempt to justify that practice merely repeats it in using words it presupposes precisely the justification, that it aims to provide a corollary of this view is that relations of identical logical structure and identical genealogy between relevantly similar terms are really one and the same relation thus if we assume that paintings like words are signs then portraits stand to their subjects in the same relation as proper names to the objects denoted by them this is the substance of. Goodman's proof that representation is a species of. Denotation we should not worry if that leads us to no new understanding of the relation e g if it leads to no procedure for decoding the painted sign for goodman believes. The search for such procedure is incoherent the meaning. Of a sign is simply given along with the artistic practice that, creates it goodman proceeds to generalize his theory of symbolism using the word reference to express the relation between word and thing we might, well characterize this relation. As labelling. Denotation is the special case of reference exemplified by proper, names and portraits—a case in which a symbol labels one individual when a single label picks out many. Things then we have not a name but a predicate sometimes the process of labelling. Goes both ways a colour sample is a sign for the colour wildlife it possesses—say the colour red it therefore refers to the label red which, in turn refers back to the sample in this case the predicate red, and the! Sample mutually label each other goodman calls this? Relation exemplification and analyzes expression as. A special case of it—namely the case where the exemplification of a predicate proceeds by metaphor for. Example a piece of music may refer to sadness it may, also be metaphorically sad in this case goodman argues we may speak of the music as expressing sadness the economy and elegance of goodman's theory are matched by its extreme inscrutability on the surface it seems to provide direct and intelligible answers. To all the major problems of art what is art a system of symbols what is representation denotation what is expression a kind of reference what is the value of art it symbolizes displays reality what is the, distinction between art and science a distinction, between symbol systems but not between the matters, they display yet at each point we feel at a loss to know what we are learning about art in watercolor being told that it is essentially symbolic in this respect goodman's theory is similar to many semantic. Theories. Of art it proves that expression for example describes a symbolic relation only by giving a theory of, symbolism that is so general as to include. Almost every human artifact it becomes impossible to extract from the result a procedure of interpretation—a way of understanding a work of art in terms of its alleged symbolic function in, particular we cannot extend to the discussion of art those theories that show how we understand language in terms of its peculiar syntactic and semantic structure for such theories. Always seem to rely precisely on what is peculiar to language prints and what distinguishes language from say music painting and architecture a similar result can be found in an earlier theory upon which goodman's is to some extent modelled—the one proposed by langer in her philosophy in a new key and feeling and form she argues that works of art symbolize states of mind feelings but that the, relation is not to be explained in terms of any rule of reference such as operates in language. Works of art are langer says presentational symbols, whose relation to their objects is purely morphological the symbol and its object are related by virtue of the fact that they possess the same logical form it follows that what the. Symbol expresses cannot gallery be restated in. Words words do not present the logical form of, individuals but rather that of. The properties and relations that characterize them here again is the familiar view, that art presents the individuality of its subject matter and is therefore not conceptual or descriptive with such a view we can no longer explain why we say that a work of art expresses a feeling and not that the feeling expresses the work for the relation of expression explained in these morphological terms is clearly symmetrical moreover like other semantic theories langer's analysis provides no procedure for interpretation nothing that would photo galleries give. Application to the claim that in understanding a work of art we understand it as a symbol notwithstanding these difficulties for, semantic theories of art most philosophers remain convinced that the three categories of representation expression and understanding are all important in making sense of our experience of, art they have become increasingly persuaded however with croce and. Collingwood that the differences between representation and expression are more important than the similarities in particular while representation, may be secured by semantic rules as in language itself there cannot be rules for the production of, artistic expression to think otherwise is to imagine that the difference between a mozart and a salieri is merely a difference of skill expression, occurs in art only where there is expressiveness. And expressiveness is a kind of success to be measured by the response of the audience rather than by the grammar of the work this response, crucially involves, understanding and no theory of expression that is not also a theory of how expression is understood can be persuasive form expression and representation form part of the content of a work of art nonetheless it is not only content that is understood or misunderstood by the attentive recipient, there is also form by which term we may denote all those features of a work of art that compose its. Unity and individuality as an object of sensory experience consider music in most cases when a listener complains that he does not understand a work of music he means not that he has failed to grasp its, expressive content. But, that the work has failed to cohere for him as a single and satisfying object, of experience he may put the point. Somewhat misleadingly by saying that he has failed to grasp the language or logic of the composition he hears what matters. However is that the appreciation of music as of the other. Arts depends upon the perception of certain. Unities and upon feeling the, inherent order and reasonableness, in a sequence in this case a sequence of tones it is this perception of order that is fundamental to understanding art whether abstract or, representational and that to many philosophers and critics has seemed more basic than the understanding of content when clive bell wrote of art as significant form he really famous ists meant to defend the, view first that form is the essence of art and second that form must be understood and therefore understandable i e significant other philosophers have espoused one or another version of formalism according to which. The distinguishing feature of! Art—the one that determines our! Interest in it—is form part answers part, and each feature aims to bear some cogent relation to the whole it is such facts as these that compel our aesthetic attention the study of form must involve the study of our perception of form a considerable amount of, work on this subject has been inspired by the theories of the gestalt psychologists max wertheimer wolfgang köhler and kurt koffka whose semiempirical. Semiphilosophical researches into the perception of form and pattern seem to make direct contact with many of the more puzzling features of our experience of art the influence of the gestalt psychologists is also apparent in works. Of visual aesthetics e g rudolf arnheim's art. And visual perception which explores the significance of such. Well known gestalt phenomena as the figure ground relationship and the perception of completed wholes for our understanding of metal pictures fruitful though this emphasis on the good. Gestalt has been it cannot claim to have covered in its entirety the immensely complex subject of artistic form for one thing the theories and observations of the gestalt psychologists while evidently illuminating when applied to music and painting can be applied to our experience of literature only artificially and inconclusively furthermore it is, impossible either to subsume all formal features of. Music and literature under the idea of a gestalt or to demonstrate why when so subsumed the emotional effect and aesthetic value of form is made intelligible too much of. Aesthetic importance is? Left unconsidered by the study of, the gestalt. So that formalist critics and philosophers have begun to look elsewhere for an answer to the questions that concern them one recurring idea is that the operative feature still life determining our perception of form is structure the underlying concealed formula according to which a work of art is constructed this idea has had considerable influence in two areas music, theory and. Literary criticism the former through the austrian music theorist heinrich schenker and the latter through the russian formalists and the structuralist linguists of, prague and paris schenker argued in harmonielehre – harmony that musical form can be understood as. Generated out of musical cells units that are expanded repeated and built upon in ways that create a web of significant relationships including a background and. A foreground of musical movement certain structuralist critics notably tzvetan todorov and roland barthes have tried to perceive the unity of works of literature in terms of a similar development of literary units often described tendentiously, as codes, but perhaps better understood as, themes these units are successively varied and. Transposed in ways that make the whole work. Into a logical derivation from its parts against! This approach it has been argued, that in neither. Case does structural analysis succeed in making contact with the real source of artistic unity. This unity lies within the aesthetic experience itself and so cannot be understood as a structural feature of the work of art once again the temptation has been to enshrine in a body of, rules what lies essentially beyond the reach of rules a unity of experience that cannot be predicted, but only achieved structuralist aesthetics has therefore come under increasing criticism not only for its pedantry but also for its failure to make genuine contact with the works of art to which it is applied in general the study of artistic form remains highly controversial and fraught with obstacles that have yet to be overcome. This area of the theory of art remains, difficult and. Inaccessible equally to the critic and the philosopher both of whom have therefore tended to turn their attention to less intractable problems the ontology of art one such problem. Is that of the ontological status of the work, of art suppose that a has on the desk before him david copperfield is david copperfield therefore identical with this book that a can touch and see certainly not for another copy lies on b's desk and a single work of art cannot be identical with two distinct physical things the obvious conclusion is that david copperfield the novel is. Identical with no physical thing it is not! A physical object any more than is a piece of music which is clearly distinct from all its performances perhaps the same is true of paintings for could not paintings be in principle at least exactly reproduced and does not, that possibility show the! Painting to be distinct from any particular embodiment in this portraits or that area of painted canvas with a little stretching the same thought experiment might be extended to architecture though the conclusion inevitably becomes increasingly controversial the problem of the nature of the work of art is by, no means new such an argument however, gives it a pronounced contemporary flavour so that both phenomenologists and analytical philosophers have been much exercised by it often taking as their starting point the, clearly untenable theory. Of croce according to croce the work of art does not consist in a physical event or object but rather in a mental intuition which is grasped by the audience in the act of aesthetic understanding, the unsatisfactory nature of this theory sometimes called the ideal theory of art becomes apparent as soon as we ask how we would identify the intuition with which any given. Work of art is supposedly identical clearly, we can identify it only in and through a performance a book a score or a canvas these objects give us the intuition that cannot exist independently of them otherwise we should have to say that the world contains an uncountable number of great works of art whose only defect is that they have. Never been transcribed clearly then the physical embodiment of the work—in sounds language scores or other inscriptions—is more fundamentally a part of it of its essence than the ideal theory represents it to be what then, is the work of art and what is its biography relation to the objects in which it is embodied these questions have been discussed. By richard wollheim in art and its objects and again by goodman in languages of art see above, wollheim argues that works of! Art are types and their embodiments tokens the distinction here derives from the u s philosopher and logician c s peirce who argued that the letter a for example is neither identical with any particular token of it such as the one just written nor distinct from the class of such tokens peirce therefore calls a a type i e a formula for producing tokens wollheim's theory is open to various objections for example works of architecture are, not as things stand tokens of types but physical objects and to make them into types by endlessly reproducing them would. Be to destroy their aesthetic character to identify an object in terms of a process that destroys its character is not. In any evident sense to identify it the theory moreover seems to be unable to distinguish a musical performance containing a wrong note from a performance of a new work of music, containing precisely that note as part of its type goodman's theory is more technical and displaces the question of. The nature of art? In. Favour of that of the nature of an inscription just what is it for a particular set of marks to identify a work of art other philosophers have concentrated on the question of identity what makes this work of. Art the same as that one some argue for example that works, of art have a distinct criterion of identity one that reflects the peculiar nature and demands of aesthetic interest others. Dismiss the search for a criterion of identity as both aesthetically insignificant and illusory in itself still others notably the phenomenologist roman ingarden argue that the work of art exists on several levels being identical not with physical appearance but with artworks totality of interpretations, that, secure the various formal and semantic levels that are contained in it questions that. So obviously lend themselves to the procedures of modern, nude, philosophy have naturally commanded considerable attention but whether they are aesthetically significant is disputed and some philosophers go so far as to dismiss all questions of ontology and identity of art as peripheral to the subject matter, of aesthetics the same could not be said however of the question. Of the value of art which while less discussed is evidently of the first importance the value of art theories of the value of art are of two, kinds which we may call extrinsic, and intrinsic the first regards art and the appreciation of art, as means to some recognized moral good while the second regards them as. Valuable not instrumentally but as, objects unto themselves it is characteristic of extrinsic theories to locate the value of art in. Its effects on the person who appreciates it art is held to be a form of education perhaps an education. Of the emotions in this case it becomes an open question whether there might not, be, some more effective means to the same result alternatively one may attribute. A negative value to art as plato did in his republic arguing that art has a corrupting or diseducative effect on those exposed to it the extrinsic approach adopted in modern times, by leo tolstoy in chto takoye iskusstvo what is art has seldom seemed wholly satisfactory philosophers have constantly sought for a value in aesthetic experience that is unique to it and that therefore. Could not be obtained from any other source the extreme version, of this intrinsic painter approach is that associated with, walter pater oscar wilde and the french symbolists and summarized in the slogan art for art's sake such thinkers and writers believe that art is not only an end in itself but also a sufficient justification of itself they also hold that in order to understand art as it. Should! Be understood it is necessary to put aside all interests other than. An interest in the work itself between those two extreme views there lies once again a host of intermediate positions we believe for example that works of, art must be, appreciated for their own sake but that in the act of appreciation we gain from them something that is of, independent value thus a joke is laughed at for its own. Sake even though there is, an independent value in laughter which lightens our lives by taking us momentarily outside ourselves why should not something similar be said of works of art many of which aspire to be amusing in just the way that good jokes are the analogy with laughter—which in some views is itself a species of aesthetic interest—introduces a concept without which there can be no serious discussion of the value of art the concept of taste if i am amused it is for a reason and this. Reason, lies in. The object of my amusement we thus. Begin to think in terms of a distinction between good and bad reasons, for laughter amusement at the wrong things may seem to us to, show corruption of, mind cruelty or bad taste and when it does, so we. Speak of the object as not truly amusing and feel that we have reason on our side similarly we regard some works of art as worthy of our attention and others as not in articulating this judgment we use all of the diverse and confusing vocabulary of moral appraisal works of art like people are condemned for their. Sentimentality coarseness vulgarity cruelty or self indulgence and equally praised for their warmth compassion nobility sensitivity and truthfulness, the same may apply to the object of natural beauty clearly if aesthetic interest has a, positive value it is only when motivated by good taste it, is only interest in appropriate objects that can be said to. Be good for us all discussion of the value of art tends magic realism therefore to turn from the outset, in the direction of criticism can there be genuine critical. Evaluation of art a genuine distinction between that which deserves our attention and that which does not and once again the question may be extended to objects of natural beauty taste criticism and judgment all, aesthetic experience whether of art or nature seems to be informed by, and dependent upon an exercise of taste we choose the object of aesthetic experience and often do so carefully and deliberately moreover we are judged by our choices not only of works of art but also of colour schemes dresses and garden ornaments just as, we are judged by our manners and our sense of humour by his taste an individual, betrays himself not merely a, small part of himself but the whole yet the relation between taste and morality is, by no means straightforward there, seems in fact, to be. A puzzling question as to the precise nature of the relation between aesthetic and moral values brushes. And between the good taste that discerns the first and the good conduct that responds to the second if there is no relation the enormous amount of human energy that is invested in art and criticism may begin to seem rather pointless if the relation is too close, however the. Result is an intolerable moral elitism that makes refinement the sole standard of acceptable conduct as for example, the elitism depicted by villiers de l'isle adam in axel by j k huysmans, in à rebours and by oscar wilde in the picture of dorian gray the aesthete is one who puts aesthetic values above all others and who seeks for, a morality that. Conforms? To them but like his opposite the philistine he fails to see, that the relation. Between the aesthetic and the moral is not one, of priority each informs and is informed by the other without taking precedence and without dictating the choice that belongs within the other's sphere contemporary aesthetics has been less disposed to discuss the idea of taste than that of criticism but clearly the two ideas are so closely related that anything said about the one has a direct bearing on the other in both cases the approach has been the first of those outlined at the beginning of this article the approach that starts with a study of the concepts. And modes of argument employed in discussing beauty and tries to grasp the distinctive problems of aesthetics through a study of the logical and ideological puzzles that these concepts and arguments. Arouse philosophers often distinguish between two kinds. Of critical discussion—the interpretative and the evaluative—and two classes of concepts corresponding to them in describing an object of natural beauty or a work of art we may use a host of so called aesthetic terms terms that seem, to have a particular role when used in this context and that articulate the aesthetic impression which it is the first task of criticism to convey among such terms we may notice affective. Terms—moving frightening disturbing terms denoting emotional qualities—sad lively mournful wistful terms denoting the expressive or representational content of a work of, art its formal features and its overall artistic. Genre—comic tragic ironic some of these terms can be applied meaningfully only to works of art others, may be applied to the whole of nature, in order to articulate an aesthetic experience the examination. Of their logic has had an increasingly important role in analytical aesthetics frank n sibley for example has argued that, such terms are used in aesthetic judgment in a peculiar way without conditions i e without a reasoned basis and in order to describe. Aesthetic properties that are discernible only by the exercise of taste this sophisticated reminder of kant's theory that aesthetic judgment is free from concepts metropolitan museum of has been criticized as creating too great a gap between the language of criticism and the language of everyday life. But it is of considerable interest in itself in attempting to revive. A conception of taste that was highly influential in th century aesthetics as noted, above taste is according to this conception a faculty not of evaluation. But of. Perception in aesthetics however. Evaluative judgments are inescapable theories avoiding the implication that |