Aesthetics Blog Posting

1.       Some key concepts I learned from the first video were that Aesthetics is the philosophical study of art and beauty and that many people have many different theories on this topic. Also, art forms are each very dynamic, so there is no proper definition for art.

Some key concepts I found interesting from the second video was how scientific viewing art really is. All of the sensory input and thought processing that goes into viewing a work and understanding it. Certain things we like stimulate our brains to look closer or want to see more.

Some key concepts I liked from the article were how people are so much quicker to look at a painting when they recognize something from everyday life. When they see something that they understand, they feel good about looking for something more. I also like how the article mentioned that many people connect symmetry with beauty because a lot of times when something is symmetrical, it means it’s alive. That is a very interesting concept that I never before explored.

2.       From the video, the philosopher’s theory I most connected with was Kant whose theories came to be during the age of enlightenment. His thought on what was beautiful was that the judgment of these things can’t be rule based. He said that it was all based on feeling. When one thinks something is beautiful, it is normally due to strong feelings they have towards it for whatever reason. Also, he also states that no school in the world could teach someone how to make a masterpiece. One’s own creativity can’t be learned.

3.       I liked a lot of what Changeux had to say. Something that really stood out to me was when he talked about bottom up realism and top down abstraction. Someone can look at a painting of a tree and just see it as a tree, which is our bottom up processing. Our brain is letting us see something for what it is. However, maybe if we look a little longer, we will start to maybe see things hidden in the picture, or that the tree is also something else. Or it could even be just a tree, but there could be a message the artist wants to portray with that image, and we can see that we use our top down processing. It allows us to think abstractly and not just simply see what is there. During this process our brains are making use of the information we are receiving.

I thought Ramachandran was a little over the top, however I did like how he pointed out that a lot of art is not meant to be realistic. Many times people will say that something doesn’t look like it’s supposed to, but that’s because it’s not. Many artists like to create abstract pieces that will capture viewers’ attention. They deliberately exaggerate features or distort images. I liked how he also said that people seem to like things more when they are farther from realistic. People tend to think that the closer to realistic something is, that maybe the artist messed up the work. But with someone like Picasso, people adore his work because they can see it is meant to be that way.

4.       The videos and article relate to the text because they explore how to look at art and how to determine what we think is art and what we think isn’t. They also explored single artists and why they painted the works they did or constructed what they have constructed. It’s fascinating to look at something and see it as a mere painting, and then to get inside the artists head and see so much more. It is interesting to learn about an artists’ life and their past experiences. It helps to get inside their head and think more about not just what they painted but how they painted it. They also all talk about beauty and how beauty connects with art and how they can somewhat be interchangeable but also on completely different spectrums to some people. Plato found no art in writing, but some people feel as though writing is art, but they do not think it is beautiful. I like how all of the different sources gave away the reality that art is different for everyone, which is why it is so hard to make statements about it.

5.       I liked the article much more than the films. It was much more upbeat and I liked how it brought science into making art but also kept it interesting and kept the theme of it art is a lie or not. The Picasso quote at the beginning of the article caught my attention right away. I thought they added depth to the reading because they explained some things that weren’t in the reading but were about some of the same artists and what not, and they gave a lot of information on how humans see art and why we like what we do. I feel as though the book goes more in depth, but the videos and articles added some interesting details.