I’m not sure what that says about me. Nothing good, I’m sure.
Perhaps it is this same inclination that moves me to generally avoid the comments section on websites. With a few exceptions, I find the arguments and dialogues in these sections to be fatuous or unfocused. The retreat into the protection of “my opinion” is particularly frustrating because it seems so common. Even my Appreciation students will fall back into this at the end of the semester where they are confronted with more recent artworks.
What I see are arguments, even on truth statements, where the commenter berates his critics because they question something that they feel is only an opinion. The underlining (or hidden) premise being that judgment, particularly aesthetic judgment, is completely arbitrary.
What I find particularly fascinating is that this view seemingly extends throughout the entirety of societal continuum. Everyone from anti-intellectual pundits, who decry contemporary art as inane products of cultural elitists, to turtle-neck-wearing postmodernists appear to believe that aesthetics is all “in the eyes of the beholder”.
The fake news-site, the Onion, had a particularly fun parody of this phenomenon – a confusing alliance between those who hate art and those who hate “art”.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29798
While I recognize that the topic of aesthetic judgment is simply too vast to do justice to here, let me put forward a few thoughts on which I would like to see more discussion.
As further research is conducted in fields such as neurology, biology, and psychology (particularly Evolutionary Psychology, though I recognize its limitations), we are developing a greater understanding of how the mind works and how humans assess atheistic concepts. Interestingly, the research seems to suggest a greater similarity amongst individuals and cultures than we had previously suspected.
Obviously, we need to recognize that, really, there is no such thing as Absolute Truth. This is a concept that is introduced in the Philosophy 101 courses in every school in this country, and then repeated (ad nauseum) by every person who ever took that course. I still have colleagues who remind of this in every conversation – i.e., “Brian, you cannot prove that this table before us actually exists”.
I take this concept as a given. Even in more evidence-based disciplines, science and history for examples, nothing is seen as absolute, unalterable “fact” – everything is based upon a scale of probability. Evidence and reason help determine which theories hold the greatest probability of being true and factual. Of course, there does come a point where the evidence is so overwhelming in support of one theory that to hold a differing view would be irrational.
Could there be a somewhat similar spectrum to aesthetic judgments?
Lets look at an example: Every year, as we get set for the Academy Awards, critics argue about which films were the most important or innovative – in short, which ones are most deserving of recognition. Generally, the group of films that are being discussed is fairly small, perhaps only one or two front-runners. How is it, given the scores of movies that come out every year, that the majority of filmgoers will recognize a relatively small group as being “the best”?
Perhaps these judgments only become clear in the extreme. Critics can argue about whether Orson Welles gave a finer performance in Citizen Kane or Touch of Evil without approaching a conclusion. However, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would consider Dude, Where’s My Car to be on the same artistic level as either of Welles’ films. This is not say that they might not enjoy Dude, Where’s My Car more than they would Citizen Kane, but few people would see them as equal artistic achievements.
So this tells us something. Perhaps there are some objective underpinnings of our subjective responses.
Most people will not trust their evaluation of a meal if they happen to have a cold at the time. We recognize that certain factors restrict our ability to fully appreciate something – which could lead us to conclude that there are some identifiable (even testable?) determinates of quality.
Now, obviously, I cannot discount how variants in experience can affect evaluation. I believe that part of the reason that I so greatly enjoyed Pan’s Labyrinth was the totality of the experience that I had while watching it. My wife and I had made a special trip to a smaller, art house theater in Atlanta to see it. This was a theater where the picture and audio quality were superb and the audience was experienced in viewing foreign films.
Yet, I feel that, even if I had viewed the film on my iPod, I would have at least recognized the film as well-made and superior to most of the movies that I had seen that year. I imagine that most relatively intelligent people would have drawn the same conclusion, even if they did not enjoy it as much as I did. What I mean is that, regardless of experience, intelligent arguments could be made to support the concept of this film as being one of quality.
Now there are current philosophies that reject the concept of a hierarchy of quality and stress that any conclusion drawn can only be personal and arbitrary.
For now, let’s begin our discussion by examining the premises that I have already introduced. Is “merely stating an opinion” a sufficient argument? Is it possible to establish some form of a “hierarchy of taste” where certain artworks are clearly superior to others?
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