As you can see in my recent posts in this blog and in other places and languages, I can't help but ponder on the nature of art and beauty, and challenge the values, or the principles? behind contemporary art. Views on contemporary art is so contextual, art needs interpretations but interpretations are not the intrinsic value of art. The subtext behind "Everything can be art" suggests the interpretations define what art is, which is at least what I get from looking at most of the contemporary artwork in museums (galleries are better because they sell, what a capitalistic view on art), that art can be not related to beauty, or if beauty is also an open concept that cannot be defined. This leads me to question the nature of art and beauty, and after some rough searches and listening to a few episodes of talks about art on the popular Hong Kong YouTube Channel of Corrupt the Youth, which is a group of philosophy students and scholars promoting philosophy to the public, I found Kant could be the philosopher that can lead me in searching for answers. So I am reading Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology, and some other books about art philosophy. Kant in Judgement of Beauty claims that the judgement of beauty involves judgement of taste to be "universally valid" in a sense that everyone ought to share with one's pleasure in it (Ginsborg, 2022).
How this can relate to my "practice"? Well, I have my own plan to train my drawing and painting skills, and that aside, I am still planning to do some installations. Making art is so intrinsic to me. When finding subject matter, it is all intrinsic, and expressive sometimes. Capturing a moment in life, in reality or in imagination, is the urge to treasure it, and share it. Even that is true for non-representational art, as all you want is to share something, to be appreciated. Appreciation is essential. You don't need art to provoke reflections really, as we have other words for that, namely, action, protest, rebellion, revolution, movement. Doing the things, for example, the above things, through art, suggest that there is a more fundamental element about art that is distinct to those things. So I would argue that art is the representation of something that is worth sharing with others and the art as a whole is worth appreciated. Therefore, sharing what I want to share in a way that I expect others to appreciate (whether they end up do or not) is what I will do.
As seen below, I am studying how to paint soft body acrylic in colours like midjourney. I am learning from AI now.
Reference:
Ginsborg, Hannah, "Kant’s Aesthetics and Teleology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/kant-aesthetics/>.
P.S. I was absolutely frustrated about how unreliable adobe cloud drive is... making my portfolio until late night because it did not save my file even the * was gone... but anyway it was done by 3 a.m. you can take a look.
Comments