Objective quality in purely subjective things

[Gori the Grey]

Here's one that touches on something that I think hasn't been delved into in this thread.

A case against objectivity in art can be found in cultural frames of reference. For example, traditional Chinese art can be difficult to appreciate outside of the particular cultural frame of reference. Traditional Chinese art is full of cultural symbolism, and viewed from a Western perspective (or Western-adjacent ones like Japanese - partly by chance, not just because of cultural diffusion), it might appear repetitive, unoriginal, and garish.

I feel as though @Angst's great post (which was not a derail, but provided a lot of tools for getting at what Hygro wants to discuss) did do a good job of getting at the importance of frames, including the importance of cultural frames of reference. I'll go back and dig out the bits that I thought were making that reference.

I do not know Chinese art, but I can report my immediate response to the painting you posted is that it strikes as beautiful even by the Western standards that I have (both deliberately and unconsciously) assimilated. I am certain I don't understand it as someone native to that artistic tradition would, but the placement of figures accords to what I find pleasing, the balance of colors is pleasing, the colors themselves are pleasing (all the blues). The chosen shape is not fully in accord with classical western conventions, but not so far outside them as to prevent appreciation of the total composition.

If we were going to seek something objective in the fact that a Westerner can find artistic beauty here, I'd start with composition. I have a starting hunch that the relative placement of the human figures will accord with whatever the most common proportions are for Madonna and Child or Gabriel and Mary in paintings of the Annunciation. I'll dig up the Angst quote that I think is relevant there, too.

Here's Botticelli's Annunciation, for example:

I recognize the same basic compositional principles governing the placement of the two focal figures in the picture you posted, @aelf

This is what I heard Angst saying in parts 5 and 7 of his manifesto:

a lot of historic attempts have done mathematical models and made leaps of inductive logic to claim universality

There would have been some old-fashioned art critic who asserted a "golden ratio" governs the size and relative position of the two central figures in both paintings. No, that's "flying too close to the sun," but:

within their own frameworks of creation and observation, the old masters are on god damn point. it's very predictive for educating people for the material process of creating something good. that's the whole point of skil

That doesn't mean principles like the golden ratio aren't operative in our aesthetic response to particular works of art.

I'll just list other "Western" aesthetic principles that I feel apply immediately to this piece:

Many of them have to do with balances:

The human figures and their foreground space take up 2/3 of the total "canvas" space, the background 1/3.
The colors of the seated and standing figures oppose but balance. Different colors, the red more simple, the blue more ornate, each of them with a little bit of the other figure's dominant color.
The background primarily in another color, yet, a kind of golden yellow, that lets the foreground figures function as foreground.
Each major figure balanced vertically by a smaller figure
Left v right figures balanced: bearded on the left, beardless on the right.
Three facing mostly out to one facing in.

Not all of them have to do with balance.
I love it that the river is golden and the shoreline blue. (Can't wait to learn what that means to people who have the cultural competency to process the intended meanings of this picture).

Back to balances, though: the river's lines are fluid, the shoreline's rectilinear. The background vegetation is diffuse, the foreground figures sharper in definition. Dark green of vegetation runs along the whole left side; background for the top two thirds, foreground for the bottom third.

Kyr knew to observe a lot of these principles just in the framing of a tourist photo: thirds vertically (green, black and white, blue), one-third, two-third horizontally (black white). Focal figure fully in frame, off-center, made focal by surrounding elements. Tilt the camera a quarter inch (6mm) down and the peaks of your focal figures are suddenly out of frame; tilt it a quarter inch up and blue needlessly predominates.

 

[aelf]

I feel as though @Angst's great post (which was not a derail, but provided a lot of tools for getting at what Hygro wants to discuss) did do a good job of getting at the importance of frames, including the importance of cultural frames of reference. I'll go back and dig out the bits that I thought were making that reference.

I do not know Chinese art, but I can report my immediate response to the painting you posted is that it strikes as beautiful even by the Western standards that I have deliberately and unconsciously assimilated. I am certain I don't understand it as someone native to that artistic tradition would, but the placement of figures accords to what I find pleasing, the balance of colors is pleasing, the colors themselves are pleasing (all the blues). The chosen shape is not fully in accord with classical western conventions, but not so far outside them as to prevent appreciation of the total composition.

If we were going to seek something objective in the fact that a Westerner can find artistic beauty here, I'd start with composition. I have a starting hunch that the relative placement of the human figures will accord with whatever the most common proportions are for Madonna and Child or Gabriel and Mary in paintings of the Annunciation. I'll dig up the Angst quote that I think is relevant there, too.

Here's Botticelli's Annunciation, for example:

View attachment 690922
I recognize the same basic compositional principles governing the placement of the two focal figures in the picture you posted, @aelf

This is what I heard Angst saying in parts 5 and 7 of his manifesto:

There would have been some old-fashioned art critic who asserted a "golden ratio" governs the size and relative position of the two central figures in both paintings. No, that's "flying too close to the sun," but:

That doesn't mean principles like the golden ratio aren't operative in our aesthetic response to particular works of art.

I'll just list other "Western" aesthetic principles that I feel apply immediately to this piece:

Many of them have to do with balances:

The human figures and their foreground space take up 2/3 of the total "canvas" space, the background 1/3.
The colors of the seated and standing figures oppose but balance. Different colors, the red more simple, the blue more ornate, each of them with a little bit of the other figure's dominant color.
The background primarily in another color, yet, a kind of golden yellow, that lets the foreground figures function as foreground.
Each major figure balanced vertically by a smaller figure
Left v right figures balanced: bearded on the left, beardless on the right.
Three facing mostly out to one facing in.

Not all of them have to do with balance.
I love it that the river is golden and the shoreline blue. (Can't wait to learn what that means to people who have the cultural competency to process the intended meanings of this picture).

Back to balances, though: the river's lines are fluid, the shoreline's rectilinear. The background vegetation is diffuse, the foreground figures sharper in definition. Dark green of vegetation runs along the whole left side; background for the top two thirds, foreground for the bottom third.

Admittedly, it's difficult to find the best example. I suspect the English-medium Internet tends to favour examples that appeal to Western sensibilities under the axiom that all art is universally beautiful, even if you might not understand how (while ironically selecting for the beautiful that the viewers do understand).

Still, with the right search terms, I might be able to find something more typical of those I see IRL. So lets give this another go:



This is close. As you can see, it lacks the attractive blues, and its composition and perspective are unorthodox by Western standards.

And you have to keep in mind that there are a lot of very similar paintings. This appears completely unoriginal to me. You might counter that this, then, makes it a common piece of work, like many similarly unremarkable articles in the West. But regardless of the (pseudo-objective?) quality of the art, the Chinese frame of reference would find more to appreciate in this painting.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Sorry, @aelf, but that's gorgeous--right out of the gate.

Again, compositional balance is our friend. Two-thirds pond foreground, one/third building background. The striking balance of central red and surrounding green in the foreground. Fluidity of fish against rigidity of building. The fish are vertically 1, 3, 5, but with just that arrangement in the five to avoid an unnaturally tidy disposition. Top is culture (architecture/writing) Bottom is nature (fish/vegetation). I love it that there is color-swapping in the two conceptually contrasting regions (i.e. that culture and nature use the same reds). Contrasting levels of saturation within each element (deeper and lighter reds in the fish, deeper and lighter greens in the leaves, deeper and lighter orange in the sun).

I don't know what we're going to do with the fact that a ton of "Western" aesthetic principles are immediately applicable to this picture.

I'll acknowledge that the overlapping of the chief fish and the pagoda violates one Western tenet. But that is immediately "made up for" by a higher principle: namely that such violations are permissible in service of a work's central insight. Here (for me) that insight is that the supposedly contrasting worlds of nature and human culture are in fact very much like each other: fish scales are like roof tiles (or fashioned screen walls) in color and shape.

Something like this is built on somewhat similar compositional principles:

Just in the elements-of-culture overlapping elements-of-nature bit, even including the "awkward" overlapping of the glass and the mallard, each visually competing for our attention.

Don't doubt your last point in the least.

 

[Narz]

So yeah, the mountain isn't art. But it's divinely beautiful in the way that informs us of this concept of "objective beauty." that is subjectively experienced. These natural scenes inspire and demonstrate what art does as well, but are different. Sort of "the source".

So "natural" things can't be art?

Basically a creature with the awareness that other creatures can appreciate something w sensory appeal has to create something and say "hey look @ this" for it to be art?

So is AI art not art or does it not become art until a human decides it is?

 

[Kyriakos]

There is rl art, typically unintentional.

It can also be intentional - people can try to captivate. The result is individually sensed, as with everything else.
The motifs are universal, for example the above painting has some parallels to the (poorly drawn) meme of the party observer

While it is impossible to pick up exactly the same things, it is highly unlikely that the core type isn't picked up (secondary types may not be).

Munch made a number of variations of something regarded as having lead to this painting, where three stages of women are presented. While you won't get the effect of the painting, it'd be hard to not feel anything at all even by photographs of young-to-old, or sometimes just by observing such on the street.

 

[Hygro]

So "natural" things can't be art?

Basically a creature with the awareness that other creatures can appreciate something w sensory appeal has to create something and say "hey look @ this" for it to be art?

So is AI art not art or does it not become art until a human decides it is?

it’s a little arbitrary but I think art has to be created.

But for aesthetic value in the way that art has, nature has that too. So for the thread topic, nature is just as valid, and could even prove the point better.

 

[Narz]

Almost every morning when I'm @ the gym I look out overlooking this group of Indian guys playing badminton, it's fun watching their rallies, there's this one older guy who's not as fast but has good aim, making the younger guys run all over, he made a really nice shot yesterday & smiled, combined with the caffeine & the workout & feeling of clean voyeurism, eh you had to be there, if I'd taking a photo it wouldn't have been art tho, just weird & out of context

 

[Hygro]

But it was beautiful and had that thing.

 

[Narz]

Yeah, but I had to kinda meet it there, I think in an enlightened state every moment can be like that whereas for most of us you just get a few milliseconds here & there

 

[Angst]

So "natural" things can't be art?

Basically a creature with the awareness that other creatures can appreciate something w sensory appeal has to create something and say "hey look @ this" for it to be art?

So is AI art not art or does it not become art until a human decides it is?

there's "art" as the material and "art" as a mode of engagement. the former isn't universally necessary as a component of experiencing art (which i guess hygro disagrees with). i will say though - framings where you artistically engage with unintentional, generative, or naturally happening material are quite rare. (as a mode.) some people have experiences like that more often as it sounds like you do. as i mentioned earlier in the thread, john cage had a similar approach to material.

~

ai art is still not well understood in aesthetics, but understand that it's still at this point a program made by humans referencing material made by humans (even photos fall under this category). so if i draw two transclusent paintings (probably exists, lets go with it) and someone drops them on top of each other accidentally, or randomly shuffles a pile of such paintings to match two, that's what ai is doing right now, even if it's naturally more elaborate than that.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The ability to create art (music, painting, writing, dance, etc.) seems heavily tied to genes which can be passed along to offspring. This raises the question of why? Why do we do art and enjoy it it even if we did not create it? People have been creating art for tens of thousands of years. We have hardwiring to both create and enjoy it. The usefulness of it from an evolutiionary sense might well be questioed. I'm not sure that "artists have more children" works cvery well. If we are hardwired to respond to art, then the whoole question of meassuring objectivity looks out of place.

 

[Angst]

The ability to create art (music, painting, writing, dance, etc.) seems heavily tied to genes which can be passed along to offspring. This raises the question of why? Why do we do art and enjoy it it even if we did not create it? People have been creating art for tens of thousands of years. We have hardwiring to both create and enjoy it. The usefulness of it from an evolutiionary sense might well be questioed. I'm not sure that "artists have more children" works cvery well. If we are hardwired to respond to art, then the whoole question of meassuring objectivity looks out of place.

being heavily social creatures is generally evolutionary useful. having good brains is evolutionary useful. art ties into both. however, it does not mean art in itself is evolutionary useful, or indeed useful at all.

i'd caution generally to try and do evolutionary psychology or evolutionary humanism (as in, overapplying evolution in liberal arts) and using that to read into wasteful or strange behavior somehow making us efficient. evolution isn't inherently optimization (stay with me here). evolution is getting "good enough". there's a lot of basic things our bodies do wrong on a basic design level. same with our minds. i'm not even talking ineffeciency, but wastefulness and self-destruction. all of it is fine because we're social animals (communal behavior is a great survival strategy for a lot of animals), that our bodies are really good at what we're good at (running, throwing spears), and our brains are great at snatching those calories (creative solutions to problems, and in spite of their calorie requirement, we're omnivorous and actually get a lot out of our food nutrient wise).

in some aspects, culture could be viewed through an evolutionary way through the lens of competition (the surplus calories from agriculture completely outpacing hunter-gatherer societies, for example), but in the vein of art, it's an expression of our social nature. maybe there's an aspect to it irt sexual selection (look how many calories i can waste on idle nonsense that you find pretty; i'm a peacock; dancing is the same thing), but it has very little application when it comes to actual aesthetics. whether art is productive or useful has very little merit for its purposes.

 

[Narz]

The usefulness of it from an evolutiionary sense might well be questioed.

Creativity shows imagination, imagination is what makes us human (animals may have a little but nowhere near as much)

If a guy has some imagination on canvas, he may have some in the bedroom.

If a poet can talk his way in your heart he may be able to talk his way out of being murdered by some bandits (and his wife being kidnapped and raped)

There's no much more practically useful than imagination and creativity. That's why the best of them thruout history has special status.

One bricklayer is as good as another but how often do you get a Leonardo Davinci? In the past men were largely expendable, those without much imagination or special skills were liable to get recruited to go off to war somewhere but if you're a decent creative, now you've got protection, patrons (and your wife(s) as well) and if you're good enough you'll never have to toil in the fields or battlegrounds.

To not see how imagination is evolutionarily advantageous is a failure of imagination.

 

[Narz]

in some aspects, culture could be viewed through an evolutionary way through the lens of competition (the surplus calories from agriculture completely outpacing hunter-gatherer societies, for example), but in the vein of art, it's an expression of our social nature. maybe there's an aspect to it irt sexual selection (look how many calories i can waste on idle nonsense that you find pretty; i'm a peacock; dancing is the same thing), but it has very little application when it comes to actual aesthetics. whether art is productive or useful has very little merit for its purposes.

Art should be useful. Music gets me thru my workout. A good sci-fi movie could inspire real life technological research.

If something is just kinda pretty but pointless and doesn't spurn some improvement of the human spirit (for lack of a better word) it's useless.

Take children's books as an example (one I have to interface with @ this moment in my life).

The best have lessons. If there's no moral, no point, just pretty drawings or some stupid rhymes it's low art (in my eyes barely art @ all)

To draw one more analogy, art is like food, it should nourish you. Bad art is like junk food, it doesn't give, it takes and the more you interface with it the worse you feel.

 

[Angst]

Art should be useful. Music gets me thru my workout. A good sci-fi movie could inspire real life technological research.

If something is just kinda pretty but pointless and doesn't spurn some improvement of the human spirit (for lack of a better word) it's useless.

Take children's books as an example (one I have to interface with @ this moment in my life).

The best have lessons. If there's no moral, no point, just pretty drawings or some stupid rhymes it's low art (in my eyes barely art @ all)

To draw one more analogy, art is like food, it should nourish you. Bad art is like junk food, it doesn't give, it takes and the more you interface with it the worse you feel.

i'd rather not repost my whole rundown in this thread, so i'll keep it short: this is just wrong.

it doesn't compute with what we knows what art does. as in, what we observe in people engaging with art. whether people engage with it has no innate connection with whether it is useful, uplifting, or teaches you anything directly. you can want art to be anything you prefer, sure, but that has very little to do what it is. it's the latter you take seriously if you want to figure out what it is rather than your preferences on what it should be.

the very nutrient metaphor i think i shortly used myself earlier in the thread. art literally has no nutriental function in this sense. the relationship between material and its observer is too arbitrary to be measured like we'd do calories and vitamins. some art has the explicit purpose of making you worse off, yet people seek it out. if you want to talk about what art actually is, then, you should maybe take that into consideration.

also i'm sorry, but your take on the dnd bard roll scaring off bandits is super funny. like, just bring a spear.

 

[Kyriakos]

i'd rather not repost my whole rundown in this thread, so i'll keep it short: this is just wrong.

it doesn't compute with what we knows what art does. as in, what we observe in people engaging with art. whether people engage with it has no innate connection with whether it is useful, uplifting, or teaches you anything directly. you can want art to be anything you prefer, sure, but that has very little to do what it is. it's the latter you take seriously if you want to figure out what it is rather than your preferences on what it should be.

the very nutrient metaphor i think i shortly used myself earlier in the thread. art literally has no nutriental function in this sense. the relationship between material and its observer is too arbitrary to be measured like we'd do calories and vitamins. some art has the explicit purpose of making you worse off, yet people seek it out. if you want to talk about what art actually is, then, you should maybe take that into consideration.

also i'm sorry, but your take on the dnd bard roll scaring off bandits is super funny. like, just bring a spear.

Someone was a very young kid, and was playing with other kids in some communal room of the building. There was a sign nearby, but he couldn't yet read. Years later, he returned to the place. Having forgotten about the communal play room, he saw the sign, which simply read "communal play room", and remembered he used to play there.
That's a function of art - you already carry anything you are to discover, along with the tendency to react as you do.

 

[Angst]

Someone was a very young kid, and was playing with other kids in some communal room of the building. There was a sign nearby, but he couldn't yet read. Years later, he returned to the place. Having forgotten about the communal play room, he saw the sign, which simply read "communal play room", and remembered he used to play there.
That's a function of art - you already carry anything you are to discover, along with the tendency to react as you do.

example is very platonic of you btw

well i guess not really but remembering to realize, all that.

 

[Narz]

i'd rather not repost my whole rundown in this thread, so i'll keep it short: this is just wrong.

it doesn't compute with what we knows what art does. as in, what we observe in people engaging with art. whether people engage with it has no innate connection with whether it is useful, uplifting, or teaches you anything directly. you can want art to be anything you prefer, sure, but that has very little to do what it is. it's the latter you take seriously if you want to figure out what it is rather than your preferences on what it should be.

Art is and should be useful, useless art perhaps is a sign of status (like the useless grass-only 'garden' of royalty past that has morphed into today's modern lawn)

People sing songs to kids because song & rhyme sticks in the head better than spoken commands. Armies used to march with a band even tho on first glance one might think it would be better to put an extra weapon in the drummer's hand.

Beauty is sustenance, without beauty people lose their will to live. In times of dire lack art can keep one going, can mean the difference between life & death. So yeah it is of the utmost practicality.

It's not about teaching us something like school where we can pinpoint the exact information we gleaned & write an essay on it, it's more ethereal than that & more important. So like you said it doesn't transmit 'directly' but it does transmit, if it didn't it wouldn't be art.

the very nutrient metaphor i think i shortly used myself earlier in the thread. art literally has no nutriental function in this sense. the relationship between material and its observer is too arbitrary to be measured like we'd do calories and vitamins. some art has the explicit purpose of making you worse off, yet people seek it out. if you want to talk about what art actually is, then, you should maybe take that into consideration.

Art is nutritious that's why it exists, obviously it's harder to quantify that magnesium content but no less real.

Again I'm separating proper art from pop art or art to show off, I agree those have little to no ability to nourish.

also i'm sorry, but your take on the dnd bard roll scaring off bandits is super funny. like, just bring a spear.

One spear no good against a band of bandits, if they see you're armed they'll kill you immediately, but maybe you can bribe them with quick wits (probably not but force 100% won't work if you're outnumbered 5 to 1, life is not a kung-fu movie)

 

[Gori the Grey]

The best have lessons. If there's no moral, no point, just pretty drawings or some stupid rhymes it's low art (in my eyes barely art @ all)

At the higher levels of that art form, if a narrative has too explicit a moral, it's regarded as a defect.

 

[Narz]

At the higher levels of that art form, if a narrative has too explicit a moral, it's regarded as a defect.

Well yes of course, it shouldn't be too explicit & certainly not preachy. It might be up for interpretation, perhaps the artist him or herself can't define it exactly but there has to be something there. A cigar may sometimes just be a cigar but if it is it isn't art.