Art for Art's Sake: Philosophical Discussion
Unit: Art
Theme: Philosophy of Art
Introduction
Art for art's sake—the usual English rendering of l'art pour l'art, a French slogan from the latter part of the 19th century—is a phrase that expresses the philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only 'true' art, is divorced from any didactic, moral, political, or utilitarian function. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, and Oscar Wilde argued for the doctrine of art for art's sake. Wilde, for instance, claimed in the preface to his dark novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, “All art is quite useless.” He believed that art need not express anything but itself. He put the value on artistry above anything else and regarded life as a kind of art form, to be lived beautifully.
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Learning Objectives
- Understand the concept of beauty in art
- Explain the concept of rationalist beauty
- Gain an awareness of what aesthetic sensible pleasure means
- Experience art as the highest platform for spiritual elevation
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Main Lesson
1
Plato
In the West, the history of philosophical reflection on the arts began with Plato. His important contribution was preceded by his exploration of aesthetic judgment. Plato believed that reality is made up of forms that are beyond the limits of human sensation and that are models of all things that are part of human experience. The objects that human beings experience are examples or imitations of those forms. What is sought, through philosophical reflection, is the understanding of the forms and not of the copies. The artist copies the experienced object, or uses it as a model for his work. For the philosopher, on the other hand, beauty resides in the idea and not in sensible things. The beauty of sensible things is derived from the participation of intelligible forms.
Question 1
In which way do the artist and the philosopher differ in reference to the concept of beauty?
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2
Aristotle
Aristotle approached beauty from another perspective. Beauty is not a means to an end, but an end in itself; that is, an immediate quality. He distinguishes between end and means, identifying the latter with the useful. Useful are all everyday goods that do not become a means to something. Beauty, on the other hand, is not arbitrary, contingent, or irrational. This has served as the basis for his aesthetic to be qualified as rationalist. Beauty is contained in symmetry, which he considers the symbol of perfection, linked to the classic concept of beauty: harmony, order and proportion.
Question 2
Based on the way Aristotle approached beauty, how would you define rationalist beauty?
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Question 3
Based on Baumgarten's theory of sensible perception, what is aesthetic sensible pleasure?
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Baumgarten
Among the elements that contribute to Baumgarten's aesthetic construction is discovering the faculty of the aesthetic object, beauty as an object of aesthetic knowledge, and the conception of aesthetic truth. Through sensible knowledge, Baumgarten proposes aesthetics as a science of sensible knowledge, which deals with beauty. "The end of aesthetics is the perfection of sensible knowledge as such and this is beauty." Baumgarten places aesthetics in the field of knowledge: "the History: Debates and Trends – v. 19, no. 1, Jan/Apr 2019, p. 31-48 art of thinking beautifully”. The German philosopher tries to see how to use the lower faculties to achieve maximum perfection. It is a science that deals with a specific activity of human thought (inferior knowledge) and Baumgarten's contribution consisted in showing that sensitive intuition has its internal laws, its own logic.
Question 4
According to Baumgarten, what is beauty?
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5
Kant
The German philosopher Kant (1729-1804), using his judgments of aesthetic taste, proposed in his Critique of Judgment (1790) that objects can be judged beautiful when they satisfy a disinterested desire that does not imply personal interest or need. In Kantian aesthetics, art itself is not examined, but rather the faculty of judging it. The beautiful object has no specific purpose and judgments of beauty are not expressions of simple personal preferences. For Kant, aesthetics takes on the meaning of a science of sensibility. The German philosopher is interested in art for its connection with beauty, not for art itself. Beauty, according to Kant, is not a quality typical of beautiful things produced by artists, but rather a feeling of pleasure of the subject who judges things as beautiful, whether they are works of art or of nature. His aesthetic is a subjective aesthetic, whose first premise is the judgment of taste, applied indistinctly to objects of art or nature.
Question 5
Why is Kant's idea of aesthetics a subjective aesthetic?
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6
Hegel
Hegel (1770-1868), a German philosopher considered one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of Western philosophy, in his thesis, established that aesthetics was a science that deals not with sensations but with the philosophy of art. The philosophy of art studies the nature of art, including concepts such as interpretation, representation and expression, and form. It is closely related to aesthetics, the philosophical study of beauty and taste. For Hegel, art is the highest platform for spiritual elevation. Hegel fulfills the concept of art in that for him art is the perfect sensuous expression of the freedom of spirit. It is in classical art, therefore—above all in ancient Greek sculpture (and drama)—that true beauty is to be found.
Question 6
Based on Hegel's thesis, in which way is art the highest platform for spiritual elevation?
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7
In the 19th century, however, avant-garde concepts applied to aesthetics began to question traditional approaches. The change was very evident in painting. French Impressionists, such as Claude Monet, were the object of severe criticism, by the academic painters, for representing a surprising reality before the eyes of these, capable of observing more than what they really saw, as were the surfaces of many oscillating colors and shapes caused by the distorting play of light and shadow.
In the late 19th century, Post-Impressionists, such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent Van Gogh, were more interested in pictorial structure and expressing their own psyche than in depicting objects from the natural world. At the beginning of the 20th century, this structural interest was developed by Cubist painters such as Pablo Ruiz Picasso. Cubists brought different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear fragmented and abstracted. At the same time, the Expressionist concern, that the image of reality is distorted in order to make it an expression of the artist's inner feelings or ideas, was reflected in the work of Henri Matisse and other Fauves', as well as German Expressionists of the caliber of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
'A member of a group of French painters who favored Fauvism. Fauvism /ˈfoʊvɪzm̩/ is the style of les Fauves, a group of early 20th-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism.
Question 7
Briefly summarize those aesthetic aspects that made each one of the mentioned avant-garde concepts uniquely different.
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A note to Remember
Closely related to these approaches, to a certain extent non-figurative of the plastic world, the principle of "art for art's sake" gained relevance, derived from Kant's thesis according to which art had its own reason for being.
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Case Study
Bhakti Sudhir Goswami
Srila Bhakti Sudhir Goswami Maharaj (born in 1952) is a theologian, essay writer. In his youth, he turned onto philosophy – Western and Eastern. His spiritual quest brought him to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Playing the role of a "theologian-intellectual", he gives lectures and continues to produce Math’s literature.
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Discussion Questions
- In which way do the artist and the philosopher differ in reference to the concept of beauty?
- Based on the way Aristotle approached beauty, how would you define rationalist beauty?
- Based on Baumgarten's theory of sensible perception, what is aesthetic sensible pleasure?
- According to Baumgarten, what is beauty?
- Why is Kant's idea of aesthetics a subjective aesthetic?
- Based on Hegel's thesis, in which way is art the highest platform for spiritual elevation?
- Briefly summarize those aesthetic aspects that made each one of the mentioned avant-garde concepts uniquely different.
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Activity 1
Team up with your group and answer the questions posted above. Establish a discussion with the rest of the class about the meaning of the phrase art for art's sake, based on the philosophical discussion stimulated by the questions above.
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Journaling
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Glossary
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Sources
Fragment of "Approximation to Indigenous Aesthetics" (Translation and Editing by J. L. Morejon).
Galindez, L. (2019). Approach to indigenous aesthetics.
Dialnet-ApproachToIndigenousAesthetics-6770005.pdf
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-aesthetics/
Philosophy of Art. https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-art
Srila Bhakti Sudhir Goswami Maharaj https://govindamaharaj.com/en/preachers/goswami-maharaj%20.html
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